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  • Fact-checking Rimas Bružas’ column on LRT: 2% real vs 50% claimed

    Last week, many Belarusians living in Lithuania were disturbed by the column written by journalist Rimas Bružas. Among other things, the author intended to show that Belarusian migrants who ‘bring along a stinking snake of disrespect towards our [Lithuanian] way of life’ are not welcome in the country.

    The text only presented a few facts, but one figure was easily verifiable. Journalist Siarhei Tsverdzichau questions certain claims from the high-profile story through a research.

    Is Rimas Bružas getting a little too worked up?

    Fact jour­nal­ism and com­men­tary jour­nal­ism share a com­mon trait – they are both based on facts. Should be. If an author cites an opin­ion, no mat­ter how con­tro­ver­sial it may be to some­one, they are enti­tled to do so. But facts need to be checked, oth­er­wise the argu­ments sound friv­o­lous.

    Regard­ing the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Belaru­sians in Vil­nius, Rimas Bružas notes that while stuck in traf­fic, ‘one might feel as though they were in Min­sk due to the near­ly equal num­ber of cars with Belaru­sian and Lithuan­ian license plates’.

    For those per­ma­nent­ly resid­ing in Lithua­nia, it sound­ed dubi­ous, to say the least. Cars with Belaru­sian license plates are now quite rare on the streets of Vil­nius and Kau­nas. In the last year or two, there have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er of them, espe­cial­ly after many relo­cants reg­is­tered their cars with local author­i­ties as required by law.

    The arti­cle implies that the author is advo­cat­ing for action, which is what upset the Belaru­sians. He rhetor­i­cal­ly asks if read­ers have wit­nessed Lithua­ni­ans orga­niz­ing ‘anti-Belaru­sian flash mobs’ near the Akropo­lis shop­ping cen­ter, or if they have seen posters por­tray­ing Lukashen­ka and Putin in ‘obscene pos­es,’ or if they have come across leaflets placed behind their wind­shield wipers.

    The BAJ author con­duct­ed a fact check after the colum­nist men­tioned a shop­ping cen­ter pop­u­lar among Belaru­sians. The goal was to ver­i­fy if there were indeed as many cars from Belarus as stat­ed in the arti­cle.

    After care­ful­ly study­ing the text, it is clear that the num­ber of our com­pa­tri­ots in Lithua­nia is con­cern­ing to the jour­nal­ist. It is worth inves­ti­gat­ing whether Rimas Bružas is exag­ger­at­ing. Espe­cial­ly since it is very easy to ver­i­fy this fact.

    What about the share of Belarus cars?

    The study was con­duct­ed on Sun­day from 12:00 to 1:00 pm to observe the peak num­ber of Belaru­sians near Akropo­lis. The park­ing lot in front of the shop­ping cen­ter was almost full, with the major­i­ty of cars hav­ing Lithuan­ian license plates.

    Do you need evi­dence? Here it is: The author of BAJ count­ed the num­ber of cars with non-Lithuan­ian license plates and took rel­e­vant pho­tos in the park­ing lot with a capac­i­ty of over 1300 vehi­cles.

    The results showed that 24 cars with Belaru­sian license plates were parked in front of the shop­ping cen­ter. Includ­ing a BMW with diplo­mat­ic license plates, i.e. its own­er can be con­sid­ered a Belaru­sian only very loose­ly, but we have includ­ed this car in the Belaru­sian sta­tis­tics.

    Do some sim­ple math. You’ll get the fol­low­ing. Let’s assume the park­ing lot is 90% full – that’s 1,170 cars. What is the share of Belaru­sian cars? Recall, that there are 24 of them. Two per­cent! This is a far cry from the 50% that Rimas Bružas writes about.

    The fact that Belaru­sians are more com­mon among for­eign­ers in Vil­nius is what the author of the arti­cle on the LRT web­site is right about. At that time, the park­ing lot had 7 cars with Ukrain­ian license plates, 3 with Lat­vian license plates, 3 with Pol­ish license plates, 2 with Eston­ian license plates, 1 with Finnish license plates, and 1 with Ger­man license plates. The vehi­cles changed fre­quent­ly, but their pro­por­tions remained con­sis­tent. Enough to get an idea.

    It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that such a num­ber of Belaru­sians who trav­eled to Vil­nius could pose a threat to any­one! In my opin­ion, the expres­sion used (‘there are almost as many cars with Belaru­sian license plates as with Lithuan­ian ones’) is unsuc­cess­ful and spec­u­la­tive, even if it is intend­ed as an artis­tic device.

    So how many Belarusians are there in Lithuania?

    Oth­er facts tes­ti­fy that there are not so many ‘vis­i­tants from Belarus.’ In par­tic­u­lar, sta­tis­tics on Schen­gen and nation­al visas issued by the coun­tries of the rel­e­vant agree­ment. Belaru­sians used to be record-break­ers in obtain­ing Schen­gen visas, but in recent years they have become almost out­siders. It is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to obtain a per­mit for cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus to vis­it the Euro­pean Union.

    While it has always been quite a quest, now it’s an expen­sive pro­ce­dure with a sig­nif­i­cant risk of fail­ure. Accord­ing to Ali­ak­san­dr Liber, a visa ana­lyst who spoke with Zerka­lo, the cost of an EU visa for Belaru­sians ranges from Br390 to Br2,000 (€110 to €570), and the deci­sion can take up to a year. So the entrance tick­et is too expen­sive, and to get to Vil­nius, a Belaru­sian must have great moti­va­tion.

    Belaru­sians now find it eas­i­er to trav­el to Rus­sia, but many still choose Lithua­nia because they feel more aligned with Euro­pean val­ues. This is not just about shop­ping and restau­rants.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion on LRT, there were dis­cus­sions among jour­nal­ists that the offi­cial data regard­ing the num­ber of Belaru­sians in Lithua­nia may have been exag­ger­at­ed. Under the new require­ments, truck dri­vers are now required to obtain res­i­dence per­mits instead of visas. This means that they are con­sid­ered res­i­dents, even though most of them live in their truck cabs or Belarus. Accord­ing to the Lithuan­ian Freight For­warders Union, there are approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 work­ers in this cat­e­go­ry.

    If this is true, then the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra in Lithua­nia may not be as large as offi­cial­ly claimed. Accord­ing to the lat­est pub­lished data, approx­i­mate­ly 60,000 Belaru­sians reside in Lithua­nia. How­ev­er, if we exclude pro­fes­sion­al dri­vers, the num­ber may be clos­er to 20,000.

    No need to look for enemies among friends!

    But back to Akropo­lis. The exam­ple of Fred­erikas Jan­sonas demon­strates how the posi­tion of the same per­son can vary depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion. As not­ed by Pozirk, in a 2024 inter­view with Žinių Radi­jas, the advi­sor to the Lithuan­ian pres­i­dent stat­ed that Belaru­sians could poten­tial­ly become the fifth col­umn. He believes that the par­lia­ment made a mis­take by refus­ing to lev­el the play­ing field for Belaru­sians and Rus­sians.

    «The Depart­ment of State Secu­ri­ty sig­nals that the prob­lem is that thou­sands and thou­sands of Belaru­sians come to Lithua­nia every month. And we’ve cre­at­ed a poten­tial­ly big prob­lem,» the offi­cial empha­sized.

    In the past, Fred­erikas Jan­sonas served as Akropo­lis’ media rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive and made con­flict­ing state­ments. For exam­ple, in an inter­view with the Belaru­sian state TV chan­nel ONT in 2015, he spoke in Russ­ian:

    “They come because there is a wide vari­ety of goods, qual­i­ty mer­chan­dise, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to save mon­ey. Where­as 5–7 years ago they went shop­ping, now they come for leisure. They ice skate, they bowl.”

    Indi­vid­ual Lithuan­ian offi­cials are not the only ones who have changed their rhetoric. After 2020, many peo­ple approved the posi­tion of Belaru­sians, but with the out­break of war in Ukraine the atti­tude changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Many peo­ple now claim that we are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of an aggres­sor coun­try.

    How­ev­er, most of the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra in Lithua­nia are against Lukashenka’s regime and strong­ly oppose Rus­si­a’s actions. This was evi­dent from the large num­ber of white-red-white flags at the march in sup­port of Ukraine in Vil­nius on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022.

    In short, anti-Belaru­sian attacks tar­get demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Lukashen­ka and Putin are effec­tive­ly using it in pro­pa­gan­da to their advan­tage. For instance, the news­pa­per SB. Belarus Segod­nya used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pub­lish a series of mock­ing images. The images alleged­ly fea­tured Gitanas Nausė­da and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra. The news­pa­per accom­pa­nied the images with the fol­low­ing com­ment:

    « ‘Free­dom fight­ers’ who rushed to Lithua­nia were warned that they would only be need­ed there as long as the idea of a coup d’é­tat in Belarus was still on the agen­da of the West. Not only did they not believe, but they also became so out of line that they began to con­sid­er them­selves as his­tor­i­cal mas­ters of the Lithuan­ian lands.»

    Rimas Bružas’ Face­book post attract­ed a typ­i­cal response. The com­men­ta­tors include sup­port­ers of so-called ‘Litsvin­ism’ and ‘Russ­ian world’. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some com­ments con­tained threats against the author. In short, a rich col­lec­tion of par­rot cries from the Krem­lin bots has been assem­bled.

     

     

    Such con­ver­sa­tions and mis­un­der­stand­ings can lead to neg­a­tive out­comes. Only author­i­tar­i­an regimes ben­e­fit from wors­en­ing rela­tions and shar­ing a com­mon his­to­ry. To defend free­dom, we must stay unit­ed rather than seek out ene­mies among friends dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time for democ­ra­cies world­wide.

    The author’s opin­ion may dif­fer from that of the edi­to­r­i­al board.

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    Публікацыя фільма пра пратэсты выклікала гучны рэзананс. Прычына — у бяспецы. Што кажуць аўтар і медыя?

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