Today during the roundtable discussion “Price of Racial Discrimination: Effectiveness of Equal Opportunities Policy in Lithuania,” state officials, researchers and representatives of the NGO community discussed ways to ensure equal opportunities for all racial and ethnic groups in Lithuania. The event opened the "Action Week against Racism" and was followed by a press conference.
Participants have agreed that racial and ethnic discrimination is becoming acute problem in Lithuania. Ausrine Burneikiene, Ombudsperson for Equal Opportunities, informed the group that the number of complaints alleging racial and ethnic discrimination is increasing. "Racial and ethnic discrimination becomes an acute problem because of of the free movement of people within the EU labor market,” she said. “Lithuanians should tolerate newcomers of different racial and ethnic backgrounds if they want to be tolerated in other cultures. Reportedly, Lithuanians experience intolerance and discrimination as immigrants in other countries.”
Antanas Petrauskas, Director of the Department for National Minorities, pinpointed that media is often an important actor in molding negative images of racial and ethnic minorities. By emphasizing negative aspects and ignoring positives, the media creates and maintains negative stereotypes about certain groups and individuals. Mr Petrauskas suggested that NGOs representing national minorities should feed the media more information about traditions, customs, problems and other positive aspects of racial and ethnic minorities.
Henrikas Mickevicius HRMI Executive Director, has emphasized that Lithuania still has to improve the legal framework to combat racial and ethnic intolerance and discrimination. Lithuania still has not ratified the 12th protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights, the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages and did not join Article 14 of the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. “National legislation needs to be improved, first and foremost, we must recognize that a racial motive to commit a criminal act is an aggravating circumstance and we must improve professional knowledge and skills of attorneys, prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officers who work in this field,” stressed H. Mickevicius.
Participants have concluded that Lithuania is lacking coordination and planning in human rights work. “In Lithuania, no State institution or official monitors and analyzes the situation of human rights, identifies problems or suggests solutions,” said H. Mickevicius. Discussants have agreed that the creation of a national human rights institution, as has been recommended by the Committee for Elimination of Racial Discrimination, might be the best way to address the problem.
Among the participants were representatives of the Office of Ombudsperson for Equal Opportunities, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of National Minorities, the Center for Ethnic Studies, the Office of the European Commission in Vilnius, the Council of National Minorities, the Lithuanian Human Rights Centre, the Roma Community Centre and the Campaign “All different – All Equal”.
The roundtable discussion was a part of Action Week against Racism 2007. For the full programme see the subsection of this website titled Action Week against Racism 2007.
© 2012 Human Rights Monitoring Institute