No, I am not kidding. After the news that the director is threatened with one thousand litas fine or prison for each day of delay in complying with a court order to remove these boards, I thought to myself: "This is the moment when a Higher Power finally decides to intervene and end the "board" guerrilla war between the stubborn Polish community and a repressive state". We will have the first political prisoner in independent Lithuania, and such prisoner is a treasure. It would draw the eyes of Europe to the fact that what in other states is simply known as citizens' freedom and rights, is a crime in Lithuania.
And how amazed would be the representatives of Amnesty International...!
I know that the director sees nothing funny in this, but it should be even less funny for the representatives of the Lithuanian justice, who have set a trap for themselves this time. Suing Mrs Liucina Kotlovska as an individual and placing it in front of an alternative - either horrendous tribute from her private pocket (or rather bailiff execution) or penalty of freedom deprivation - will expose the repressive Lithuanian legal system. And that is great!
If I was the defendant, I would let to be handcuffed in the courtroom after the hearing scheduled for 16th May. That way Lithuania will shame itself in front of the whole world. It can be sure that the works on the miserable Law on National Minorities will improve (and maybe even the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages will be ratified) after such a discredit. Without a doubt, there will be also a record admitting public names in the languages of national minorities in the Law. Well, unless our politicians will continue locking people in prison in order to protect "the ethnic name of Lithuanian lands" from the disastrous neighbourhood of "non-Lithuanian letters".
My hobby is to take pictures of bilingual inscriptions wherever I am. I have loads of them already - from Hungary, Finland, Germany, Poland. I brought a trilingual one from South Tyrol - in Italian, German and Ladin. There are also plenty of photos of the boards from Singapore... in five languages. But some wild Asia is probably not a good example for our one of the most unique European countries? "We are unique! We and our language, which had to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site long ago" - these are the words of a committee consisting of representatives of the Seimas and the World Lithuanian Community. In my opinion, it is worth to be locked in prison also in the intention to bring back this society from insanity to look for threats where there are none.
Lucyna Schiller
