Anti-Lithuanian sentiment

Anti-Lithuanian sentiment (sometimes known as Lithuanophobia) is the hostility, prejudice, discrimination, distrust, racism or xenophobia directed against the Lithuanian people, Lithuania or Lithuanian culture. It may also include persecution, oppression or expulsion of Lithuanians as an ethnic group. Some Belarusian academics are known for engaging in historical negationism and trying to culturally appropriate Lithuanian culture, national identity and history of statehood by arguing that the Belarusian word litoutsy (літоўцы), meaning ‘Lithuanian’, historically refers to modern Belarusians instead whereas present-day Lithuanians are pretenders who should actually be identified as letuvisy (летувicы) and are accused of stealing their ethnonym as well as the historic name of their homeland. Some Belarusian scholars consider the statehood of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to be primordially Slavic rejecting the notion that its origins come from Baltic Lithuanian tribes. Historian Mikola Yermalovich claimed that King Mindaugas was Belarusian whereas the epicentre of historic Lithuania was actually in central and southern Belarusian lands. During the Belarusian opposition protests in 2021, a Lithuanian woman was arrested and beaten up by Belarusian OMON forces after they found out she was a Lithuanian citizen. In 2023, statistics from the previous year alone indicated that a significant number of Lithuanians were exploited or faced discrimination at work in Belgium with Federal Public Service Employment getting around 400 complaints: 168 of cases were from Lithuanians who did not receive their paycheck or it got delayed whereas 234 of them received smaller payments than their coworkers for the same work because of their background. There were also accounts of Lithuanians facing racist or humiliating comments such as being called ‘dirty’, ‘Eastern European’ or noted as coming ‘from the Soviet Union’ in their certificate of employment. In 2007, a scandal began to surface as it emerged that some Irish schools forbid Lithuanian children from using their native tongue.