The Foreign Ministry announced a statement on Thursday that emphasized the government's concern for and condemnation of the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) for rejecting the re-registry of the license for Crimea's only independent television news channel, ATR, a Crimean Tatar channel, forcing the channel to shut down. Under Russian legislation, all Crimean media was obligated to re-register before April 1. The deputy director of Amnesty International for Europe and Central Asia, Denis Krivosheev, claimed applications from Crimean Tatar websites, publications and broadcasters have been arbitrarily rejected or left without a reply. In the statement released by the Foreign Ministry, they underlined Turkey's strong support for the Crimean Tatars and said they would closely follow developments in the region. While the government said such action toward Crimean Tatars is an example of a policy of suppression, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also said that forcing the closure of the Crimean Tatar news channel would not halt the aspiration of Crimean Tatars for freedom and truth. Speaking to the Guardian, ATR director Shevket Memetov said with the authorities now under Russian rule, freedom of speech had been stifled. ATR is the only channel that broadcasts in Crimean Tatar. The ethnic group constitutes roughly 13 percent of the total population and has linguistic ties with Turkey and many Crimean Tatars live in Turkey. Sixty percent of the channel's content was in Russian, 35 percent in Crimean Tatar and 5 percent in Ukrainian.