© EuroFootball.com
Members of the Parliamentary group "For the Future of Lithuanian Football" urge the Lithuanian Football Federation to seriously consider the possibility of cancelling the friendly match between the Lithuanian national team (B) and the Russian B national team, scheduled for November 12th this year in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation.
Members of the Parliament Arvydas Anušauskas, Egidijus Vareikis, Rytas Kupčinskas, and Saulius Pečeliūnas, who signed the appeal to the President of the Lithuanian Football Federation Liutauras Varanavičius, point out that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against traveling to this region and remind that the international community has repeatedly noted severe and ongoing human rights violations in Chechnya, urging Russia to stop them. The vast majority of Russia's cases lost in the European Court of Human Rights are precisely due to human rights violations in Chechnya.
The Parliament has also adopted several resolutions on the situation in Chechnya (e.g. December 21, 1999, February 10, 2000), in which it was suggested to initiate the consideration of Chechnya's status in the Special Political and Decolonization Committee of the United Nations Organization.
"We recognize that the Lithuanian Football Federation has the right to act completely independently, but we urge to seriously consider these arguments, evaluate that these matches have already provoked ambivalent reactions in the public space, and invite to avoid actions that would create conditions for football matches to be perceived as a politicized event," says the initiator of the campaign Arvydas Anušauskas.
