A tourist from Belarus was banned from crossing the Lithuanian border in a car with Soviet symbols.
Lithuanian border guards refused entry into the country to a Belarusian citizen who had a sticker depicting hammer and sickle inside a five-pointed red star, as well as the slogan reading “Thank you grandpa for the victory”, on his car.
Lithuanian laws prohibit the use and display of communist and Nazi symbols. The offence is punished with a fine of from 150 to 300 euros. The Belarusian tourist was offered to cross the border on foot or remove the stickers with the banned symbols from his car. After he declined both options, Lithuanian border guards denied him entry into the country and issued him a corresponding document.
The tourist is reported to be a young man born in 1995, which means he has lived his entire life under Lukashenka’s neo-Soviet dictatorship, where the cult of the Soviet Union’s greatness is used as state ideology and the victory in WWII is attributed only to the merits of Soviet authorities and given the status of national heritage. In the absence of free media and high-quality censorship-free education, the young man didn’t have access to unbiased assessment of the war and information about Soviet communist crimes, in particular the occupation of the Lithuanian Republic by Soviet troops in 1940 under a treaty with the Third Reich that paved the way for World War II.
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