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At the joint meeting of the committees, it was agreed that “the establishment of the list and the criteria of foreigners who are prohibited from entering Lithuania would be reviewed. The committees agreed that the list of criteria should be supplemented by a provision that performers who express support for Russia’s foreign policy in aggressive violation of international law may not come to Lithuania.
The NSGC and the Culture Committee also called for greater inter-agency cooperation in this context.
“However, there is an idea to improve the guidelines for submitting projects funded by the Culture Support Fund, which would provide an expert assessment with grants and a risk assessment of the spread of soft power projects into projects. cultural, “said Laurynas Kasčiūnas, president of NSGK.
This decision was supported by the committee members.
Entry to Lithuania may be banned due to national security threat
Deputy Foreign Minister Egidijus Meilūnas told MPs at the meeting that the legal acts now provide two possibilities for not admitting a certain person to Lithuania.
A person may be prohibited from entering Lithuania for a period not exceeding 5 years if they have committed crimes, as well as if they may pose a threat to national security and public order. According to this clause, a person can be prohibited from entering Lithuania for a period exceeding 5 years.
According to the vice minister, the number of institutions that can offer the exclusion of people is high.
“We, as an institution, welcome the debate that has begun, although it has gone wrong,” he said at the hearing.
Vice Minister of Culture: They told us we would lose the trial
At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Culture Daina Urbanavičienė expressed regret for the situation in which support was provided to the concert organizers Filip Kirkorov and Mikhail Shufutinsky.
According to her, the organizers of cultural events have applied for a subsidy program for canceled events.
The deputy minister said that the support had to be organized very urgently, so it was decided not to carry out an expert evaluation of the events; The requests were evaluated only from the economic aspects, the quality of the events was not evaluated.
Sigismund Gedvila / 15min photo / Daina Urbanavičienė
“I agree, and I and the members of the cultural council are in a very unpleasant situation and that signature is unpleasant and very painful, but we could not avoid signing it, but our lawyers said that we will lose the courts and the councilors will be responsible and recovered. money, ”he said at the hearing.
Mr Urbanavičienė stated that the Lithuanian Council of Culture is an expert organization and that it should do so in future.
The architect Rolandas Palekas, a member of the Lithuanian Council of Culture, deeply regretted the situation and admitted that he had never heard of such a M. Šufutinskis.
He also stressed that this was only compensation for losses and that not a single penny would be used for the royalties of those performers.
“I found myself in a very uncomfortable situation,” he told committee members.
R. Palekas said that he would speak out against the Lithuanian Cultural Council being a money distributor in the future without an expert evaluation.
V.Rakutis: concerts of Russian artists constantly “coincide” with our holidays
A member of the Seimas, the military historian Valdas Rakutis spoke at the meeting that for more than a year, the concerts of Russian artists who glorify Vladimir Putin and express their love for the Soviet era seem to coincide with our holidays.
According to him, unfortunately, it was remarkable, but no lessons were learned from it.
“We have before us a system that covers all areas of life: culture, education, defense and everything else. If we don’t create a similar system, we will always lose. If we sign some clauses in the law, the other side, which is flexible and adaptable to the situation, will find gaps and again we will have some kind of situation again ”, he emphasized.
J. Andriejauskaitė / 15 min photo / Prof. Valdas Rakutis
V. Rakutis added that another soccer team should be built in front of the soccer team, and not the concrete pillars, because those concrete pillars will hinder us.
“The field of culture is as much as any other field. They have to carry out a certain intelligence: to know who is doing what and to react suddenly, because they can change very quickly, there may be famous people in Lithuania who can cooperate. Then we have to have in the field of culture, as in the national defense system, only intelligence that monitors ”, he suggested.
V. Rakutis emphasized that we must act as an organized state, in this way we will be an equal player and maintain balance.
V. Rakutis proposed to establish a coordination center, where people who know these things would work, and in each ministry there should be people who monitor the situation so that collective decisions can be made later.
A.Pocius: Nobody cared about the concerts of Russian artists during our holidays
The problem of Russian artists glorifying the Soviet regime going to Lithuania during important holidays for Lithuania was also raised by the former commander of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, now MP Arvydas Pocius.
According to him, this has even led to contacts with various institutions, but no one has done anything so far.
“Such events were and I even remember that many efforts had to be made so that on February 23, when the Russian Army Day was celebrated in Russia, the dance and song ensemble of the Red Army was sent to Lithuania, where about 60 wanted bring uniformed soldiers. And we have been told that what is like this here is culture here. Well, let’s have common sense, ladies and gentlemen, “he said.
He proposed not to seek blame
NSGK President Laurynas Kasčiūnas said on Tuesday that the meeting was not to search for those guilty or responsible for what happened, but to find recipes so that those lessons are not repeated.
“We need a clear system of criteria that allows us to have a kind of filter, a code of honor that makes it worthwhile to make a list of desirable and undesirable people,” he said.
The president of the Culture Commission, Vytautas Juozapaitis, described it as a “terrible mistake”, but acknowledged that officials must obey laws and orders.
“That conflict sometimes becomes quite a stir,” he emphasized.
According to V. Juozapaitis, subsidies will continue to be paid and no longer the Council of Culture of Lithuania.
“If there is another institution that does that, situations of this type can arise,” he said.
The noise occurred when public figure Andrius Tapinas announced that the Lithuanian Council of Culture had awarded subsidies to concert organizers Bravo events and Mon voyage due to losses caused by the non-occurrence of the Filip Kirkorov and Mikhail Shufutinski concerts.
Representatives of the Lithuanian Council of Culture said that they had anticipated that these artists could cause outrage, thus emphasizing that the decision to allocate money had been discussed with both lawyers and responsible institutions, but there was no legal basis for not granting subsidies to these event organizers.
On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs submitted a communication to the Migration Department requesting the inclusion of Filip Kirkorov, a Russian and Bulgarian citizen, on the national list of foreigners banned from entering the Republic of Lithuania.
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