DISINFO: Lithuania promotes terrorism in Belarus
SUMMARY
Lithuania plans to commemorate Polish revolutionary Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski who it is claimed, without good reason, to be Belarusian. In their own interests, the West and Russophobia advocates have seemingly selected the little-known terrorist Kalinowski, as a Belarusian national hero, to promote terrorism. This encourages Belarusians willing to commit crime to obey orders from Western curators.
RESPONSE
This message is built around conspiracies and ungrounded claims consistent with recurring pro-Kremlin narratives about Western strategy to promote terrorism in Belarus and to make the country an anti-Russian bastion. Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski, also known as Kastuś Kalinoŭski was a 19th-century writer, lawyer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish national revival and the leader of the 1863-1864 uprising (also known as January uprising) against Imperial Russia, Kalinowski is considered a national hero in Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. The monument to Kalinowski in the Belarusian town of Svislach where Kalinowski graduated from a local school was established in 1958. In 2017-18 Lithuanian archaeologists found the remains of Kalinowski and other leaders of the uprising in the centre of Vilnius. The Lithuanian authorities plan to rebury their remains and to open a monument to the January uprising in 2019. In response to an appeal by Belarusian public figures to the Lithuanian state, the Lithuanian government stated it plans that the inscriptions on the monument will be in Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish.