After the scandal over an invitation posted to the internet to celebrate Shrovetide in Naisiai, Lithuania, which contained anti-Semitic overtones, impassioned comments ensued. Some commentators went far out of bounds and took to insulting ethnic minorities.

After witnessing the hate storm, a group of concerned citizens formed including Jews, Russians and Poles from Lithuania but also ethnic Lithuanians. They filed a complaint with the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office calling for a criminal investigation.

According to a representative of that group, this is the first such case where a group of citizens assembling voluntarily rather than an existing organization or a specific individual has filed such a complaint.

“We aren’t seeking the punishment of any specific person, we just want to show there are many people who don’t want to look on in silence when this sort of public disgrace occurs,” one group representative said.

The filers of the complaint were also angered by the announcement for the Shrovetide celebration posted by ruling Union of Lithuanian Peasants and Greens leader Ramūnas Karbauskis.

One of the invitations to celebrate Shrovetide in Naisiai here (caution: it is offensive).

The collective complaint notes: “In their invitations they use a person in costume wearing a special mask caricaturing a man of Jewish ethnicity.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.