EU – Baltic States, Lithuania

The ambassador regretted for such a low-minded, tasteless, xenophobic and racist content of the newspaper.

Liauskiene highlighted that the Lithuania's citizens who lived in the United Kingdom served as responsible contributors for the well-being of the entire country; however, the author of the cartoon did not reveal this positive effect of the immigration on the UK.

The Lithuania's Ambassador to the United Kingdom reminded that Lithuania's citizens have been living in the United Kingdom for more than 100 hundred years. Moreover, the Government of the UK has never agreed with the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and the cooperation between Lithuania and the UK was very strong.

As reported, British national morning newspaper The Independent published a cartoon where emigrants from Eastern Europe, including Lithuanians, became an object of the social satire.

In general, the cartoon reminds of a commercial by Britain's leading food retailer Tesco. It depicts four people packaged as food. The label of the package says: Migrant workers. Cheap labour value pack. 2 for the price of one. Producer of Eastern Europe.

The cartoon published on Facebook page of the newspaper provoked a lot

of discussion.

The United Kingdom is the country where the population of Lithuanian emigrants is the largest one. In 2011, according to the data of the British statistics, more than 95,000 Lithuanians lived in the UK, whereof almost 40,000 lived in London.