Ethnic minorities

Lithuania's government is set to hold a meeting on Monday to discuss the need to establish an Ethnic Minority Council.

Celebrating the end of World War II on May 9 is not a good thing to do, as the day in 1945 did not bring freedom to Lithuania or Poland, says Poland's new Ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska.

Lithuania's intelligence institutions on Monday published the traditional report of national security threats. BNS Lithuania presents the six key threats listed in the document:

Russia would defend the rights of its nationals and Russian speakers everywhere, including abroad. Such are the menacing notions emanating from the Kremlin for some time now. Meanwhile what would the ethnic Russians of Lithuania do if Russian tanks and “green men” rolled into Lithuania?

A recent poll asked Lithuania's ethnic minorities what they would do if the country were attacked by a foreign power. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription by clicking here.

Lithuania has a long history of being home to ethnic minority communities, from as early as 1323 when Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas invited foreign artisans and merchants to come to Lithuania and settle there without interference in their customs and culture.

Vilnius municipality is to launch a new Roma integration project that it said would challenge the negative perceptions of the ethnic group in Lithuania and would help Roma to integrate with Lithuanian society in a way that was tailored to their needs.

A grandmother from Klaipėda, Lithuania has received an unexpected letter from a world leader congratulating her on the end of World War II.

Lithuania's Polish speaking community held a traditional parade on Saturday to celebrate the Polish Diaspora Day which is observed on May 2.

After Thursday's rally of ethnic minority schools, a dispute has broken out between the protestors and the Vilnius municipality authorities over the aims of the rally – whether it was to improve the status of minority schools or achieve political objectives in light of upcoming elections.

Representatives of ethnic minority schools are staging a rally outside the Municipality of Vilnius on Thursday in protest of what organizers say is assault on ethnic minority education.

Despite plenty of issues of common interest at international level, relations between Poland and Lithuania remain frozen.

Vilnius authorities are considering a plan to integrate the city's Roma population into the society. It involves breaking up the notorious Roma town (the so-called Taboras) on the outskirts of Vilnius which has become a hub for drug sales.

The Lithuanian parliament should adopt a new law, allowing Lithuanian nationals to spell their names using non-Lithuanian characters in ID documents such as passports, in its spring plenary, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius said.

The Lithuanian parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday, saying the country will continue to provide opportunities for ethnic minority communities to receive education in their native languages.

A week after Gediminas Grina, the former chief of Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) compared the country’s ethnic minority schools to “education ghettos” and called for their removal, Klaipeda’s Russian school teachers are still upset about his comments.

Representatives of Lithuania's Polish-speaking community, backed by the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania (LLRA) political party, are planning a protest action this week over ethnic minority education and the planned reforms of the Labour Code, lzinios.lt reports.