Lithuanians have a serious tolerance lesson to learn, the participants of the discussion “European and Lithuanian Values: Identical or Different?” in Seimas agreed on Friday.

The lack of tolerance and the values of Lithuanians and Europeans were discussed in the panel, organised by the Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania, the Human Rights Monitoring Institute and the embassies of the Nordic countries.

These issues have caught attention of foreign ambassadors in Lithuania, who unanimously expressed their concern about the appeal to the Prosecutor General, signed by a group of Seimas members, asking to ban a parade of homosexuals.

“We are shocked,” the UK’s ambassador Simon Butt said.

The ambassador underscored that, on the contrary to the intensive actions against gay parade, there were almost no political leaders who would condemn the recent nationalist parade on March 11 and their intolerance towards homosexuals.

He stated that a democratic country and a European Union member like Lithuania should not shut its eyes on the current situation in the society.

The participants of the discussion pointed out that Lithuanians are not willing to understand that human rights are universal and that the mixing of European nations is inevitable, as is the variety of the values, races, languages, genders and models of living.

“The word ‘tolerance’ doesn’t seem to fit really well, when we are talking about discrimination: it does not define it but indicates that a part of the society has a right to look down to others and chose whether to tolerate the ones they don’t like, or not. It’s not tolerance we have to talk about, but respect,” said Randi Solberg, an Adviser at the Norwegian Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombudsman office.

“Finally, when we say that ‘we don’t like it’, ‘we don’t want to tolerate it’, we have to answer a question – what is that ‘we’? We have to find our identity, to understand, what is the current society like, how has it changed in 20 years. We, Norwegians, were simply Christians and fishermen once, but now we have changed a lot and that is challenging, when the issues of the current living are solved,” said Solberg.

According to Henrikas Mickevicius, the head of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, the recent tendencies are clear: the country had political aspirations to enter the certain institutions and various conventions were ratified, but after entering the EU in 2004, the actions in human rights field have practically stopped. After accepting the Family Concept in 2008, the situation started regressing.

“Not only the economy or national defence determines the future of Lithuania, but also the choice of verities: will this country be an advanced, dynamic, modern community, or will it become a dense province, which will be abandoned by both foreign investors and its citizens? How deep are our western values? 20 years ago, we announced that we are coming back to the family of the democratic European countries, but do we believe, that we want to be its full-time members? Are we determined to live by its values?” said Mickevicius.