Racism in Lithuania appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions towards people who are not considered ethnically Lithuanian, especially if the foreigner is of different race. According to the data provided by the Centre for Ethnic Studies,

Roma people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , ...

Chechens The Chechens ( ; , , Old Chechen: Нахчой, ''Naxçoy''), historically also known as ''Kistin, Kisti'' and ''Durdzuks'', are a Northeast Caucasian languages, Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples native to the North Caucasus. ...

refugee A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

s and

Muslims Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

are regarded with disfavour most of all in Lithuania.Responding to racism in Lithuania
(European Network Against Racism,

pdf Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

) Anti-Polish sentiments are also very strong in Lithuania. However, recent research showed that Lithuanians themselves claim to be tolerant. The problem of racism is still not widely admitted, although the government itself has put some effort to reduce

xenophobia Xenophobia (from (), 'strange, foreign, or alien', and (), 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything that is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-gr ...

in Lithuania. Since the mid-2000s the Law on Equal Opportunities forbids any direct or indirect discrimination on the basis of racial or ethnic origin, gender, religion, nationality or belonging to any other group. Lithuania is a member of the following international instruments aimed to combat racism: Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (since 2007),

Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) is a multilateral treaty of the Council of Europe aimed at protecting the minority rights, rights of minorities. It came into effect in 1998 and by 2009 it had been ratif ...

(since 2000) and

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third-generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discr ...

(since 1998). There are no estimates of the number of xenophobic acts in Lithuania, but the presence of racism and xenophobia is noted in public opinions, mostly in

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, but even in speeches of politicians, in particular, against

Africans The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each ethnicity generally having their own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Sahara ...

. According to the journalist Inga Larionovaitė,

Klaipėda Klaipėda ( ; ) is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. It is the List of cities in Lithuania, third-largest city in Lithuania, the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, fifth-largest city in the Baltic States, and the capi ...

may be considered the most racist town in Lithuania, because it is the only city which refused to implement the government program for refugees. However a rally of

skinhead A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youth in London, England, in the 1960s. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide i ...

s in Vilnius showed that the problem is universal.Inga Larionovaitė
Rasizmas Lietuvoje – su valdžios palaiminimu
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References

External links

CERD concluding observations on LithuaniaReport of the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on his visit to Lithuania
2008
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance — reports on Lithuania
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ENAR The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) is an EU-wide network of anti-racist NGOs. ENAR aims to end structural racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes ...

reports on Lithuania
20052006200720082009/102010/112011/122012/132013/14
{{Europe topic, Racism in

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

See also

References

External links