2024-05-10 10:56:22
Information about students with an alleged homosexual orientation is published in an open anonymous Telegram group, the comments to the information contain many homophobic and nationalist statements, writes the website of Lithuanian television Lrt.lt.
Readers of the anonymous community are called to violence and even murder students, some victims receive suspicious calls to their personal mobile numbers.
However, the Vilnius police stated that there were no grounds for starting a pre-trial investigation. The Belarusian students themselves are convinced: the threats in Telegram are a provocation of the security forces of Belarus.
The publication describes the story of a Belarusian student of ESU Alexei (name changed for security. — Lrt.lt). The guy lives in Lithuania. On April 16, he started receiving threatening messages from an unknown Telegram account.
A young man shared screenshots from Telegram with Lrt.lt, showing that he received a message from an account signed by Vincas, the photo shows the face of a man wearing a military cap.
On that day, Alyaksei received several messages with threats, but did not respond to them and wrote a statement to the police.
After some time, someone called Aleksey’s Lithuanian mobile phone number. The call was from a Lithuanian number that the student did not know, and thinking that it was the police, he answered.
“There was a noise, some rumbling, but no one said anything,” recalls the interlocutor of the publication.
There were two such calls, after which the stranger started writing to him again. Vincas sent Alexey a message from the Telegram group “Clean Vilnius. For race and nation!” (the name of the community is written in Lithuanian – the website of Lithuanian Television Lrt.lt).
The post contains photos of Aleksey, his name and the address of ESU.
“Hang this scoundrel,” – these are the words that begin the post about Aleksei in Telegram.
“We expose those who pose a threat to our race and nation. We urge everyone to take care of this subhuman. Let’s protect our society together from such freaks,” says the message of the community in Telegram.
Later, the threats against Aleksey began to increase.
After the suspicious calls, Vincas wrote to Alex again: “So you are waiting for my call again?” On the screenshots shared by Aleksei, it can be seen that, having written this message in Lithuanian, the stranger made a mistake and addressed the student as “you”, not “you”, as in the previous messages.
“On the same day, closer to the evening, that Vincas hacked the “chat” of students of ESU. Somehow he got there, although access is possible only through a link, and started sending photos of corpses, burnt bodies, some incomprehensible parts of the body,” Alyaksei recalls.
Later, in the community where Aleksey’s photos appeared, there was a post with photos of another ESU student. In one of the photos, the guy is standing wrapped in a rainbow flag. The title of this post is practically identical to the one under which the information about Aleksey appeared.
Students do not rule out that this is a provocation by the special services
The threats have left many students worried about their safety.
“Everyone started getting very excited, discussing everything that was happening. Many immediately deleted all their photos from Telegram. However, everyone hopes that it has nothing to do with Lithuania. Many people believe that this is a provocation, which they are trying to destabilize the situation,” says Alyaksei.
In his opinion, and other students agree with him, the campaign of intimidation is the work of the Belarusian special services.
In January, the Belarusian state TV channel ANT aired a program in which the presenter, one of the main propagandists of Belarus Igor Tur, stated that, in his opinion, recognition of the European Humanitarian University in Belarus as an extremist organization is only a matter of time.
After these statements, ESU representatives called such a scenario a disaster, as it would endanger the security of the university community. It was announced that all student and faculty information would be removed from the university’s website.
What did the police say
In response to the incidents on the Internet, the administration of the university sent a letter to students in which, based on publications in the media, they claimed that the Telegram attacks were the work of Belarusian special services. The administration noted that such experiences can be traumatic for students, and advised them to remain anonymous online and contact the police if they receive threats.
Not only Alyaksei, but also other students filed statements about threats in Telegram to the Vilnius police, but there they decided that there were no grounds to open a criminal or administrative case. According to the students, no pre-trial investigation was started on the appeals either.
On April 24, 8 days after the appeal, Aleksei received a response from the police.
“After assessing the circumstances specified in your statement and conducting an additional check of information, no signs of a criminal act, administrative or other violation of the law were found,” the police said in the reply to Aleksei, which is confirmed by screenshots that the interlocutor gave to the website of Lithuanian television Lrt. Lt.
In the “Decision” section, it is indicated that “the inspection was completed without any signs of violation.”
Another student of EHU, who was also threatened, received a similar answer. Unlike Alyaksei, she was called for questioning at the 3rd police station of Vilnius, where after talking with the investigator it was decided not to conduct a pre-trial investigation, as the police will not be able to find the authors of the threats. The website of Lithuanian television Lrt.lt does not have a copy of the protocol that confirms this, but the girl told about what happened in her own words.
Officials of the Bureau of Criminal Police commented on the situation for the website of Lithuanian Television Lrt.lt. Speaking about responsibility for such crimes, the service relies on Article 170 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, which explains that “public calls for violence or physical violence against a group of people or a person belonging to it, due to age, gender, sexual orientation and other reasons”, may lead to imprisonment for up to 3 years.
However, the search in such cases rarely gives positive results.
“Police officers are taking measures to identify persons who administer Telegram channels. However, it should be noted that criminals often use various means to hide their identity, such as VPNs, proxy servers, etc., which makes it difficult to identify them,” said the department’s comments to the Lithuanian television website Lrt.lt.
They also noted that hate crimes based on race, nationality, sexual orientation or other characteristics are almost always committed in cyberspace. Internet crimes account for 88% of all crimes related to hate or hate speech.
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