Lithuania-Poland: The failure of mutual admiration

The Poles and the Lithuanians started to apologise and confess love to each other after an atmosphere of tension had been created as a result of the matches between Lech Poznań and Žalgiris Vilnius. During the matches the fans of the teams were insulting each other. Nevertheless, the mutual admiration did not arouse such a big interest of the media and the society as the mutual insults did.

The action of gathering signatures supporting apologies for anti-Lithuanian banner in Poznań stadium was launched on 11^th August by the website gazeta.pl and generated interest of more than 15,000 people.

Meanwhile, the action of the net surfers “I don’t apologise for the banner” provoked by the apologies of gazeta.pl had got several thousands of “likes” before it was banned in the social network.

The action of the Lithuanians „Lithuania loves Poland”, which was widely advertised last week (all of the national websites as well as many foreign websites were writing about the initiative), has gained something over 1,000 proponents so far. Till yesterday the action got only 1,360 “likes” in the social network.

The net surfers believe the confession of love from the Lithuanians to the Poles failed because it was insincere.

„I wonder how this pretending to be kind to the Poles will end up” – one of the net surfers says.

Another net surfer believes that it is not hard to see the intentions of the authors of the action which included taking a picture with a poster “Lithuania loves Poland” were insincere even if we take a look at the posters themselves addressed to the Poles. The texts on the posters are written solely in English, none of them is written in Polish.

Nevertheless, the action won recognition of many Lithuanian personages who were sincerely and willingly confessing their love to Poland posing for the camera.

„It is something beautiful. Thanks to the modern technologies people say that not all of the people in this two countries went crazy and that we have a lot in common” – Rimvydas Valatka, the signatory to the Act of Independence of Lithuania of 1990, the editor-in-chief of the website 15min.lt and the famous columnist says. He also uploaded his picture with the confession of love to Poland in the social network. Valatka is one of a few Lithuanian activists and journalists who are not afraid to demonstrate they like Poland. As a consequence, myriad insults are hurled at them by the so-called Lithuanian patriotic activists.

Many net surfers believe that the fact the initiative was launched by the conservatives from the party of the former PM Andrius Kubilius also proves the admiration of the Lithuanians for the Poles was insincere. The adviser of the former PM, Mykolas Majauskas, claims to be the action’s author. His colleagues from the conservatives’ party take part actively in propagating the action. It raises many doubts among the net surfers that the Polish-Lithuanian relations have deteriorated exactly within the last 4 years whilst the PM Kubilius and the conservatives were in power in Lithuania. Many observers considered these relations to be the worst during the last 20 years. The situation of the Polish minority in Lithuania deteriorated just whilst the right-winger, Kubilius, was in office. Changing of many laws, like for example the law on education, has made this situation even worse. The old law on national minorities has been repealed at the time when the conservatives were in the lead. They did not pass a new law.

There were many anti-Polish rallies and statements of politicians like never before whilst the team of Kubilius was in power. All that created and is still creating a tension between the Lithuanian-Polish relations which have been shrouded in mist of the emotions connected with the matches as well as the fans’ behaviour.

Source: http://kurierwilenski.lt/2013/08/19/litwa-polska-niepowodzenie-akcji-wzajemnej-adoracji/

Tłumaczenie by Martyna Kołtun w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Martyna Kołtun within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.