Penalty for Polish language
At the end of the year , at the request of the representative of the Lithuanian government, the Vilnius Regional Court imposed a draconian penalty of 43 400 litas (12 569 euros) on Boleslav Daškevič, the Director of the Administration of Šalčininkai district Self-government, for the use of information boards with street names in Polish, located on private properties. The penalty was imposed because Polish informational signs still hang in the Šalčininkai district despite the order to remove them. The court as well as Lithuanian officials skipped the fact that this region is inhabited by 80 per cent of Poles. Director was given once month to pay the horrendous penalty. In case if he does not force the residents of Vilnius region to remove inscriptions in Polish from their private houses he will have to pay a fine of 100 litas for each day of delay (sic!). Explanations of a Polish member of the self-government that he has no power to remove boards from private properties, did not help at all. The penalty has to be paid and the Polish language has to disappear from the streets and eyes of fanatic officials that are poisoned by a harmful, extreme nationalism. And it does not matter that a judgement is inconsistent with the international conventions signed by Lithuania; as we see no one in this country intends to keep them, even the courts.

The destruction of Polish identity
The fight against Polish language and destruction of Polish culture in Lithuania continues in its best. The punishment mentioned above is not the first case of weeding out Polish identity, Polish culture and Polish language from the public space of Lithuania. The administrative court was repeatedly imposing fines of up to one thousand litas for the delay of the execution of court judgement regarding the removal of bilingual street names from the houses of residents, in this case on Mrs Lucyna Kotlovska, Director of Administration of the Vilnius district Self-government. All, as before, was held at the request of the representative of the Lithuanian government. Without doubts it is a type of state repression and intimidation of the Polish community and it is also an attempt of financial destruction of persons of the Polish minority that hold self-government functions. Image of persecution of Poles is completed by the tardiness in returning land possessions that were seized during the Soviet times, the assassination on Polish education in the Vilnius region and the ban on names' spelling in its original Polish form. The right to one's own name is one of the most important rights after the right to life, as it determines a unique identity of each person. It belongs to the fundamental and even innate rights of an individual. Holding by force the existing legislation in this case is keeping national discrimination in Lithuania. Any specious explanations of successive prime ministers and Mrs President will not help: a violation of fundamental human rights is a fact.

Against treaties
The situation in the Vilnius region is a specific example of state authorities' ignorance of European Union's standards, which promote multiculturalism, multiethnicity and multilingualism. Prohibition of the use of the Polish as an auxiliary language in the districts of Vilnius and Šalčininkai, where accordingly 60 and 80 per cent of the total population are Poles, sounds like a scandal of discrimination. Especially having in mind the fact that Poles are an autochthonous minority living in this area for centuries. Nevertheless, the struggle of Lithuanian authorities with bilingual street names lasts for years. To add, the Law on the State Language provides naming possibilities only in Lithuanian. It is a very bizarre situation, because until recently there was a Law on National Minorities which allowed bilingualism and which after being in force for 19 years, was not extended in 2010 (sic!). It was an unprecedented case in European Union, when a member state with a high percentage of national minorities had liquidated a legal protection provided for them. It is an obvious regress of law, which is incompatible with the recommendations of the OSCE and the Venice Commission. And what is the most important - it is incompatible with the spirit of international law. The Lisbon Treaty also puts a great emphasis on the protection of cultural and linguistic heritage, supporting linguistic diversity as one of the fundamental principles of the European Union. It is the right provided to citizens of the European Union in Art. 21 and 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, what means that the attempt to insert the exclusivity of the given language constitutes a restriction and violation of the fundamental values of the European Union. In European Union's law, the concept of linguistic diversity itself includes official, "semi-official" and regional languages as well as the languages, which are not officially recognized in a member state. This is an important definition in the context of disgraceful, official fight against multilingualism in Lithuania. The fact that Lithuania has signed a Treaty with Poland, where the use of a national minority language in private and public lives has to be ensured is worth to mention is too. It has not been fulfilled until today.

Against conventions
But what is the worst is the fact that Lithuania completely ignores Framework Convention on the Council of Europe on the Protection of National Minorities, which the authorities of Lithuania have signed and ratified. They have not implemented it into its law system and thus do not respect it - everything against the principles and good international customs. And the Convention explicitly says that local names, street names and other topographical indications of public character have to be written also in the language of a minority in regions, traditionally inhabited by significant number of persons belonging to national minority. Furthermore, a possibility to use the minority language in relations between the inhabitants and the administrative authorities is provided. Agreements should be kept - it is one of the basic norms in international relations, which is confirmed in many acts of international law. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that every agreement is binding and should be completed in a good faith; a break of a contract could not be justified by the domestic law. And this is how Lithuania acts - by justifying their actions with domestic laws. Do the Lithuanian authorities know this rule? And if so, why do they not respect the international law? There is one more important convention, of which Lithuania does not want to hear. It is the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Lithuania belongs to a disgraceful group of a few countries with a large number of national minorities, which have not ratified the Charter. A strong position in this case was taken by the European Parliament in July 2013. The EP has urged the countries, which have not done so, to sign and ratify the Charter in a special resolution concerning the linguistic diversity. It has also called to condemn any practice, which through the language discrimination or by imposed or hidden assimilation, turns against the language and the identity of other communities. If Lithuania wants to be a loyal and a high-valued member of the European Union it has to complete the call of the European Parliament. With the accession to the Community in 2004 Lithuania has expressed its consent for the supremacy of the European law over the national law. So if the internal rules are in a conflict with European norms, they must be changed and adapted to European standards, especially on such an important issue as the protection of national and ethnic minorities.

Practices like of Bismarck's
Lithuanian shameful discrimination is nothing new for Poles. The destruction of Polish culture, the fight with the Polish language and education had been already experienced once over the Poland's partition by Prussia in the frames of the Germans' Kulturkampf. This happened at the times of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck – a fierce promoter of the anti-Polish policy. Germanisation leaded by Prussian authorities had the aim to germanise the eastern areas of the Prussian state, traditionally inhabited by Poles. Their activities were planned and carried out by all legal and non-legal measures. It was a fight against Polish culture and consciousness and in a special way against the use of the Polish language. At the end the muzzle law was implemented which allowed using German language only in public. Education in Polish was banned at schools. These events were widely echoed in the whole Europe, causing protests in many environments. Is it not a similar situation that we have to face today in Lithuania? Methods and objectives are almost identical. It is enough to replace the word 'Germanisation' with the 'Lithuanization' and the description of a hundred years gains a current meaning. I hope, that like the years ago the discrimination of Poles in Prussia, the discrimination of Poles in Lithuania will echo across Europe, causing protests in many European environments. Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union came to an end. It turns out that the authorities of the Lithuanian state have not learned anything during this time, have not adopted European standards in the field of rights protection of national and ethnic minorities. There was even an escalation of actions against the Polish national minority in Lithuania. At the end of the year Lithuanian Parliament – the Seimas – with an unequivocal support of the President of the country, decided not to enact the Law on National Minorities in Lithuania, even though minorities constitute up to 16 % of the population of the country. Moreover, draconian penalties for the use of the Polish language are the evidence of an administrative weeding of the Polish language out of the Lithuanian public space. This kind of actions put Lithuania beyond the pale of fully democratic countries.

Dr. Bogusław Rogalski, Political scientist
ECR Advisor for the international affairs at the European Parliament