On June 11th, the Greek government shut down ERT, the Greek public broadcaster, without even asking the Greek Parliament. The government claimed that shutting down ERT was part of a wider plan to restructure the Greek public television, by establishing a new broadcaster that will replace it in a few months. In the meantime, the country will be left without public television

Greek people were told that their government has been setting up ERT's successor for several weeks. The Greek government even unveiled its blueprint for the new broadcaster, on June 12th, obviously trying to convince Greek people that there indeed was an organized restructuring plan. The government blueprint stated that the new broadcaster is to be called NERIT (where the I stands for Internet).

A few hours later the same day (June 12th), the blogger troktiko.eu (a columnist of To CHONI Sunday newspaper) patented the domain name nerit.gr, as nobody had cared to patent it till that moment. The patenting of the nerit.gr domain name by a private citizen (at a point of time when no legal entity named NERIT existed) crushes the government arguments for an organized plan to replace ERT and proves that no preparation had taken place. They merely rushed to execute troika's command to dismiss thousands of Greek civil servants.

Nerit.gr started operating on the same day (June 12th). In a symbolic act, nerit.gr broadcasted the ERT TV program that the former employees of the public television continue broadcasting despite the government's unjustified shut down decision. Nerit.gr became a big story in major media all over the world, internationally embarrassing the Greek government. Hundreds of thousands visited the site.

Two days later (June 14th), the President of the Greek National Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT), Leonidas Kanellos, ordered for nerit.gr to be shut down. As journalistic sources report, the shut down decision followed a Greek minister's request. Please note that EETT shut down the website without asking the holder of the domain name. Without hearing the nerit.gr's holder arguments. Without even letting him know. With no justification whatsoever!

On June 19th, troktiko.eu transferred nerit.gr to To CHONI in order for the newspaper to competently presented the case in court and take all the necessary steps to immediately reopen nerit.gr.

As a first step, To CHONI newspaper (as the legal owner of the domain name) sent a written request to obtain all relevant documents by the EETT.

The request remains unanswered.

The newspaper contacted the EETT again. They avoided it. The newspaper owners even visited the EETT offices. EETT refused, again, to give out the shut down documents to the owners of the shut down domain!

In order to survive, the Greek government has repeatedly violated To CHONI and troktiko.eu's legal rights. In 2013 Greece of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras they do not even disclose the decisions against a newspaper to the newspaper itself!

To CHONI newspaper is committed to doing everything (in Greece and abroad) to stigmatize this unethical practice of EETT, its President and the government ordering the shut down of whatever site criticizes their policies.

Spread the news everywhere. They are not free to control the Internet.