On 1 April 2012, three members of the Lithuanian Parliament — Petras Auštrevičius, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis and Justinas Karosas — submitted a formal letter to prosecutors asking for an investigation into the threats made by a “chief specialist” (PDF here) at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center, who has also published antisemitic, racist and homophobic statements and participated in the organization of neo-Nazi marches (see e.g. here, here, here, here and here).
[Two of the three targeted parliamentarians are signatories to the Seventy Years Declaration, and were recently attacked by the foreign minister; see here and here; see also MP Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis’s response here.]
The Lithuanian original of the three parliamentarians’ 1 April letter to prosecutors is here. A full English translation follows below.
[See also the 5 April 2012 article by MP Andriukaitas (English here), Ignas Krasauskas’s 4 April report, and Geoff Vasil’s 12 April analysis.]
To the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania
1 April 2012 No. 04-11/2012
Regarding the Initiation of a Pre-Trial Investigation
On 3 April 3 2012, commenting on the article “Stankutė vs. Lithuania: How Much Will the Continuing Drama Cost the State?” on Morta Vidūnaitė’s Facebook page, Ričardas Čekutis possibly incited ethnic, racial, religious or other kinds of discriminatory discord. This is what Ričardas Čekutis said (http://imgur.com/reFFQ ):
“Your little friends with AMB [= Algirdas Brazauskas] and 2K in front of them sucked up so much money for the ‘integration’ of all kinds of negroes and pederasts that, according to your logic, we should be at the peak of civilization by now. So look for the buds of civilization in their pockets…”
“and 2K, I already said… 2K is not just the Kubilius-Kirkilas gang, it’s the entirety of contemporary liberastia, socialistia and other pederastia.”
“Batka Machno doesn’t lead anyone behind him except for several drunken bandits. His contemporary prototype is Uspaskich. But a nationalist [ethnic] state, Morta, is one where the government, i.e., sovereignty belongs to the [ethnic] nation, which is what is written in the Constitution of the Lithuanian Republic. Not to some sort of ‘citizens’ but to the [ethnic] Lithuanian nation. This is also the principle of the supremacy of national law above all transnational formations, such as the EU, which we were shoved in through deceit and counterfeits. In a nationalist [ethnic] state, for example, characters such as Auštrevičius, Andriukaitis and Karosas would be shot without hesitation and that would be [the] right [thing to do], for treason. Well, you will see very soon…”
“Morta, calm down, it would be enough in Lithuania to shoot just a few hundred ass-lickers of Brussels and Moscow, what sort of aggression is that? It is an inevitability, in order to cleanse ourselves of garbage. The death penalty just needs to be returned to the criminal code to accomplish this. Well, if you don’t know what the Lithuanian nation is, then I’m afraid you are about to ask what the alphabet is…”
“‘We will govern ourselves’: this is the principle by which the nationalist [ethnic] states live, not anarchists. The best example is Japan. And what low the cosmopolitans have brought us to, we all know well. The most typical example of a cosmopolitan state is the USSR. Unfortunately the EU is tending toward exactly that…”
“People of Lithuanian ethnicity comprise the Lithuanian nation [people], Morta. The ‘modern’ view that there are no nations [ethnicities] leads to absolute degradation, resulting in the creation of a gray spineless genderless and nationality-less mass of obtuse consumers. It is easy to govern and trick this sort of mass, to milk it of its resources: in a word, the dream of all cosmopolitans. And your brother’s life in Japan in no way denies the fact that it really is the model of a nationalist [ethnic] state, which of course no one says can’t be improved upon.”
“And what have they solved ‘pragmatically?’ That they legalized narcotics, the mass murder of unborn children and the disabled, legalized pedophilia, turned black and all smokers spoke Arabic? It is a decadent country where there are also normal people who will either wake up the still living portion of the healthy ethnicity [nation] or will go extinct forever.”
“Morta, I am probably the happiest person in the world, that’s why I want others to be, too, to be free and the most moral. Now I see that it might not be enough to place several hundred against the wall… It doesn’t matter, they will serve as a preventive measure to others: ‘acquiring’ regular EU welfare and ‘support,’ their little hands will tremble and sweat…”
In employing his rights and freedoms, the individual must adhere to the Constitution and laws and not impinge upon the rights and freedoms of others.
It is enshrined in the fundamental law of the state of Lithuania —the Constitution — that the freedom to express convictions and share information is not applicable to criminal acts: incitement to ethnic, racial, religious hatred, violence and discrimination, slander and disinformation. (Commentary by Lilija Balaišienė, assistant chief prosecutor of the Third Department of the Vilnius municipal district prosecutor’s office, on March 31, 2010 (http://www.prokuraturos.lt/naujienos/prokurorokomentaras/tabid/69/itemid/3209/default.aspx).
Article 170, section 2 of the criminal code calls to account intentional ridicule, degradation, encouraging or inciting hatred and discrimination against a group of people or a member of such a group based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, origin, social status, faith, convictions or opinions. Section 3 of the same article calls to account publicly calling for violence against or the physical destruction of a group of people or a member of such a group based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, origin, social status, faith, convictions or opinions.
It needs to be noted that this [criminal] act is characterized by active actions: public statements of a specific content to an unlimited circle of people. These [statements] might contain information, opinions, facts, judgments and conclusions presented in a special, biased way expressing an extremely negative, degrading position by the person [against specific groups of people as defined in law or individuals of such groups. The public statements are intended to affect and encourage the intended audience — the undefined circle of people — to adopt the corresponding prejudice (in this case in the internet discussion). It is sufficient for just one of the above mentioned actions to have been performed in a specifically selected manner and with a discriminatory basis in order to bring [Mr. Čekutis] to criminal account.
Based on the foregoing, we ask you to determine whether there are indications of criminal acts in the actions of Ričardas Čekutis as defined in sections 2 and 3 of article 170 of the criminal code. If indications of criminal actions are established, we ask for a pre-trial investigation regarding this person to be initiated.
Appended: printed text of Facebook discussion, 5 pages.
Sincerely,
Members of Parliament:
Petras Auštrevičius
Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis
Justinas Karosas