Lithuanian reality show - lost Polish sponsorship, criticized by Lithuanian Army

"Reserved" withdraws its sponsorship of Lithuanian reality show

Vilnius representatives of the Polish company "Reserved" announced on Wednesday that the company will break off its cooperation with the reality show "I Love Lithuania." Why? The program aired a scene of breaking off a Polish street sign from a private house in Ejszyszki.

- Until now "Reserved" had a positive experience with sponsoring television programs. Unfortunately, the program "I Love Lithuania" has veered in the wrong direction, offending feelings of Lithuanian Poles. Therefore, the LPP company, which manages "Reserved" in Lithuania, is negotiating immediate termination of the sponsorship with the producers of the reality show - wrote Delfi portal on Wednesday, quoting a statement from "Reserved", which was a sponsor of the reality show.

Another sponsor of the "I Love Lithuania" was a Polish insurance company, PZU. As reported by Delfi, "cooperation of PZU with the reality show was naturally suspended (expired?)." Nevertheless PZU deplores the incident that took place.

Ostentatiously broke off a street sign

In a TV reality show, aired few weeks ago in a private Lithuanian LNK television, young people demonstratively broke off a Polish language street from a private property in Ejszyszki, Salcininkai region, showing great satisfaction. This event became widely known only last Monday when the Polish media revealed that the sponsors of the program are representatives of Polish companies in Vilnius.

On Wednesday, the producer of the program Justinas Miluszauskas issued this statement: - By this action (breaking off the the sign) neither participants, nor the creators of the program had intended to insult sentiments of national minorities living in our country. He stressed, however, that breaking off the sign was consistent with the Lithuanian legislation.

Provocation or stupidity?

President of the Union of Journalists of Lithuania Dainius Radzeviczius described the incident as a provocation. In his opinion, "if the reason for this action was something more than mere stupidity, then the program creators should bear the consequences."

Until 2010, the Lithuanian Law on National Minorities allowed for use of double, Lithuanian and Polish, names of the localities inhabited by Polish minority. That law expired on January the 1st 2010, and the new law has not been yet enacted. Currently in force is the Lithuanian Language Act, which states that all sign names are to be only in Lithuanian. It also provides for a ban on using any other language but Lithuanian in government offices. According to the decision of the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court of October 20th 2010, people who use minority languages in government offices face a fine of 400 litas (460 zloty).

Lithuanian army criticizes the "I Love Lithuania"

Representatives of the Lithuanian Army criticized today the anti-Polish reality show "I Love Lithuania." In one episode of the show its participants removed the bilingual label with the name of the street from a house in Ejszyszki (Eišiškės). Lithuanian Army has contributed to the creation of the program.

The Lithuanian Army declaration, issued today, states that "a widely publicized patriotism and fostering love to the motherland is moving in the wrong direction." The Army criticism and indignation was provoked by en episode in which participants remove the street sign with bilingual names "Vytauto" and "Witautasa" from a house in Ejszyszki. The incident reverberated in the media and caused Polish companies sponsoring the program to withdraw from sponsorship contracts.

According to the Lithuanian Army spokesman, Tomas Balkus, this is not the only reason for the military outrage. They also resent improper execution of the national anthem and inappropriate use of the Lithuanian national flag. According to the Lithuanian army, "the love of the homeland and its people and loyalty to one's country should be taught on the basis of respect and honour of human rights, strengthening the justice and rejecting violence, slander and ridicule."

Cadets from the Lithuanian Military Academy and a military band were instrumental in creating a show "I Love Lithuania". In early episodes the participants in the program had to overcome obstacle courses in Rukle and Mariampol. One of Lithuanian Army officers was also a guest in one of the episodes.

Fvck them and their retarded language. I met a retard Lithuanian here in the States he got a little drunk and felt brave enough to talk about Poland, so he got punched in his face for it.

Got your "university degree" through basketball did you?
Why should Lithuanian be a retarded language?

I think Lithuanians in general are just losers.

Almost all of their nobility became Polish.

It left behind the retards & the criminals as Lithuanian LOL.

I meant it sounds silly, no wonder many of them "choose" to speak Russian while abroad.

I wonder who's working so hard to provoke Polish-Lithuanian conflict.

Radosław Sikorski, the Lithuanian education minister and right wing Poles in Lithuania, mainly.

Sorry delph, but that's absolute simplification. The mutual antagonisms are very deep and widely spread, and they have nothing to do with Sikorski. He just added a bit of fuel to the fire by irritating Lithuanian pride and Lithuanian vanity. My opening post of this thread has nothing to do with political figures but much to do with the very social issues.

I am not personally involved in their problems but after reading some stuff here and there I begin to understand how toxic the social and internal political atmosphere in Lithuania is. Polish government is put in a really awkward position: it should stay neutral in order to negotiate some reasonable international relation with Republic of Lithuania, but it just cannot abandon Polish minority in Lithuania when their rights are violated or when they are treated as second class citizens. But since not much help comes from Poland, no wonder that frustrated Lithuanian Poles recently asked Americans to protect them from their own countrymen.

With big trepidation I started reading newly discovered portal of Poles in Lithuania, wilnoteka . I must say, I am pleasantly surprised: intelligent and balanced articles, good language, interesting information. But thats only in Polish. But stay tuned - there is much to share.

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But certainly, Sikorski could have gone a long way by engaging in diplomacy with Lithuania (perhaps by signing some sort of "no-sale of Orlen Lietuva without consent" agreement) in exchange for something for the Poles there. Instead, he deliberately chose to over-emphasise some things while almost completely denying that anything was going on with the Lithuanians residing in Poland.


It's not as bad as it's made out to be. I have quite a few Lithuanian friends, and none of them have any issues with Poles - although they do express utter annoyance at the way that the Polish minority has been reporting things - often trivial things are blown up to be huge ANTI-POLISH events.


The problem is that the Polish minority isn't helping itself - provocative acts, deliberately breaking the law of the Republic of Lithuania and generally acting as if they'd break Lithuania apart tomorrow if they could isn't endearing themselves to Lithuania. The Polish government should ignore them (it's political, and there's nothing to be gained from interfering in domestic Lithuanian politics).


That's exactly the kind of behaviour that I'd expect from right-wing Poles. The same nonsense was seen recently with two PiS members attempting to recruit help from America - which was more-or-less totally ignored. As I keep saying - the problem in Lithuania isn't with ordinary Poles and ordinary Lithuanians - it's with extremists on both sides tormenting the normal majority. Picketing the American embassy does nothing except make them look even more stupid - and causes Lithuanians to get mad that the Poles are trying to get "big brother" to help them.


Alas - any site that happily republishes "Nasz Dziennik" immediately betrays its true political leanings. It's not a newspaper that can be associated with moderate leanings - indeed, if they wish to bring credibility to their cause, they'd steer well clear of such stuff.

Bear one thing in mind - as long as Poland discriminates against the Lithuanian minority, there's nothing Poland can say about the treatment of Poles in Lithuania.

Just a quick response, because I have to run now. I will treat one issue a time later.


Yes, it quotes "Nasz Dziennik" - 11 times. But you are too quick to judge:
That site also quotes "Gazeta Wyborcza" - 10 times, TVN24 - 19 times, rp.pl - 30 times, polityka.pl - 4 times, dziennik.pl - 7 times.

What does it prove, delph? Nothing - unless you read a bunch of articles on that portal. As I said - I read few and I liked them. I'll be reading more, then I will have my final judgement. :-)

The rest are fine - I wonder why they're reducing their credibility by printing articles from ND, then?

Then again - for a Polish news source, that's remarkably unbiased!

^
Delph, let's start with the premise: "Don't judge the book by its cover". We have already established that "Wilnoteka" portal refers to, cites or quotes various Polish sources, and that is - as you said - "remarkably unbiased." I'd like to add that this is a social portal, and as such, it represents opinions of various people, with various political and social orientations. Some of them may even like and quote "Nasz Dziennik", but that should not reflect negatively on some other articles that I found remarkably mature and interesting. In the same vein you cannot judge the orientation of salon24.pl, just because many blogs there are definitely pro-Kaczyński. Many are, some are not.

I am not going to respond to all your comments at post #9. This is because we - you and I - are equally poorly informed about reality of Polish-Lithuanian relations in Lithuania. Yes, repeating what your Lithuanian friends say is not the right way to search for the answers. Your friends may be biased, as it seem obvious from your statement:


And the basic question, which was posted by Grzegorz_ was: I wonder who is working so hard to provoke Polish-Lithuanian conflict?

Before we search for the truth, some background research should be in order. Portal Wilnoteka did a good "backgrounder" job here:

Lithuanian-Polish relations: stalled bilateral work or empty strategic partnership? - a report under this intriguing title was prepared by the Lithuanian Center for the Study of Eastern Europe (English abbreviation EESC). The content of this report, as well as the discussion that arose during its presentation caused lively reactions in Lithuanian and Polish communities in Lithuania. This led us to translate the whole report, as well as large fragments of the discussion, into Polish and publish it in Wilnoteka. Due to its large volume the translation is broken into three parts:

1. EESC report, part 1: wilnoteka.lt/pl/artykul/raport-eesc-relacje-litwy-i-polski-cz-i
2. EESC report, part 2: wilnoteka.lt/pl/artykul/raport-eesc-relacje-litwy-i-polski-cz-ii
3. EESC report, part 3: wilnoteka.lt/pl/artykul/raport-eesc-relacje-litwy-i-polski-cz-iii

The original Lithuanian text can be downloaded here: wilnoteka.lt/files/Raport_EESC_wersja_litewska.pdf

I am reading it now, and I will refrain from further comments on this topic until I am ready. I suggest you do the same. :-)

Mods: this is an off topic message, but it seems important enough for me to post it here anyway to justify my anticipated unresponsiveness. I am an original poster here.

The bottom line is: I'll be off for - possibly - several days. And that's bad because I had collected some interesting Polish-Lithuanian material to be posted here.

But I did it so on my big Hackintosh machine (Standard PC hardware + Mac Snow Leopard operating system). Few hours ago I decided - unfortunately - to upgrade it to the latest 10.6.8 version. Surprise, surprise - the system failed to boot. The good news is - i am not alone, many people were caught by surprise, and this is not a hardware-specific issue. The bad news is - I am clueless what to do next at the moment.

Greetings from my outdated, "no more upgradable" (Power-PC generation), but still working laptop.

TVN showed a village where not a single Lithuanian lives only Poles, and these idiots from the show come down and rip off the Polish language signs. They appear similar to Russia's Nasi youth nationalists.

Picking and destruction of bilingual signs in the TV program and the Lithuanian ambassador of disloyal Poles - the latter views the Polish-Lithuanian dispute about the spelling of names, status of the language and the situation of the Polish minority in Lithuania. Lithuanian MEPs believe that the EU leaders are introduced by the Polish side in confusion , so they sent a letter on this subject , inter alia, the head of the European Council, Herman von Rompuy .

A copy of the letter , which was also addressed to the Head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, and the Prime Minister held the presidency of the EU Council of Hungary Viktor Orban , was also sent to the President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek.

Actually house owners allowed to remove the sign.
Also the sign itself was illegal.

Could you please tell me - do you have laws saying that there cannot be other language signs in any place when some majority is from one minority? I am not saying only about Polish minority here, but also about the others.

In Poland we have laws appreciating minorities and their national beliefs and that is why we have Puńsk/Punskas not only Puńsk for example :)

What's with all the Lithuanian threads all of a sudden?

It's bad enough having to read all the "Balkan" garbage on here! What's wrong with Polish threads?

Never had anything against them myself. I even dated one for a while, which probably makes me a "traitor" on here, but I can live with that; I'm the one who got some and you... didn't. lol

By the law signs must be written in the state language. There might be small exceptions (I do not know all the details).

It is for your state to decide what laws should be for the minorities. You have signs for minorities, we have better education for them (at least Germans in Poland say so).

Regarding Punsk. Local Lithuanians decided to remove the signs in Lithuanian. There were too many acts of vandalism, local people are scared. Also they have a lot of problems with education: Lithuanian textbooks aren't confirmed by state (also they aren't funded by state as it is in Lithuania), schools get closed...

Really not true here. I live 20 km from them so I know what is here (I was there last weekend...).

Lithuanian signs are there, as they were before. Secondary school with Lithuanian language of teaching exists, noone wants to close it - Polish governors can close only these schools which are unattended (in Puńsk there are over 100 students there). This is the only secondary school with Lithuanian language of teaching in whole Poland. Lithuanian people teach there. Also gimnasium is in Puńsk as well. Books which are used are confirmed by local authorities and Ministry of Education. They are all in Lithuanian language.

People in Puńsk organise a lot of events to show Lithuanian Culture, they have Lithuanian Culture House etc. Noone forbids them to show their Lithuanian origin. Also just today they were all together to clean what has been ruined by vandals. They are not scared - they are just disgusted of what happened (the same goes with people in Eisiskes in Lithuania). I am disgusted as well (both for these in Puńsk and these in Eisiskes).

If media in Lithuania say what you wrote, believe me - this is really not true.

Good this is the thanks that Poles get for christianising those heathens.

According to press local Lithuanian community will decide to remove the signs or not on November. Also they state that they feel like tools in hands of Poland politicians to reach some goals.

Also some Lithuanians went to Punsk and said that there are no bilingual street signs. Is that true? Because all this fuss came to being because of there street signs in Lithuania.