Days after violent protests in Latvia, riots broke out in neighboring Lithuania [2] Jan. 16, with some 7,000 gathering in the capital Vilnius to protest planned economic austerity measures. Some began throwing eggs and stones through the windows of government buildings, and police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. (NYT [3], Jan. 17)
Meanwhile, Lithuanian Jewish leaders decried a graffiti attack over the weekend, in which the words "Palestine" and "Kill Jews" along with a swastika were painted on a Jewish community building in the Baltic port of Klaipeda. "How much longer will we allow provocateurs to pit the Lithuanian and Jewish people against one another?" asked Simonas Gurevicius, executive director of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. (AFP [4], Jan. 19)
See our last posts on the econocataclysm in the Baltics [5], the politics of anti-Semitism [6], and the Gaza backlash [7].
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