Youth centre asks Lithuanian parliament to review Sinica’s migrant post

The Lithuanian Youth Centre has asked the Lithuanian parliament’s Ethics and Procedures Commission to investigate a social media post by parliamentarian Vytautas Sinica about the deportation of migrants, LRT reported.

The organisation said the post was illustrated with an image generated by artificial intelligence showing a person resembling Sinica kicking another person.

“This form of political communication raises serious questions about compliance with the principles of respect for human beings, decency and exemplary conduct expected of a member of parliament. We ask the parliament’s ethics watchdogs to assess the content posted on the social network,” Martynas Norbutas, head of the Lithuanian Youth Centre and initiator of the complaint, was quoted as saying.

The centre said using depictions of physical violence as a political communication tool was incompatible with respect for people and the standards of responsible political communication.

“Being a member of parliament does not grant the right to abandon basic standards of respect for human beings and decency. When a political message about migrants is accompanied by an image of violence against a person, we must ask what kind of public political culture we are creating in this way,” Norbutas said.

The organisation stressed that its complaint did not concern the debate over migration policy. Instead, it said, the questions related to how a particular parliamentarian’s political position was presented to the public and what actions were being legitimised.