Basketball chief found not guilty of rascism

Nov 10, 2008
TBT staff in cooperation with BNS

VILNIUS- The president of the Lithuanian Basketball Federation Vladas Garastas was found not guilty of instigating racial hatred by referring to the black players on the Zalgiris basketball team as "negroes" and "blackies" by the Prosecutor General's Office.

The preliminary investigation over potential public initiation against a group of another nationality or other people on the grounds of their race, nationality and origin was dropped after finding no criminal elements in Garastas' actions.

The prosecutors began the investigation over Garastas' publicly expressed attitude toward black players in Lithuania's Zalgiris club after receiving a request from the Human Rights Monitoring Institute.

The prosecutors have closed the investigation ruling that Garastas' interviewer didn't warn him the conversation is being taped and would be broadcast publicly, therefore the federation's president might have been mistaken in believing that he was being asked for his personal opinion.

Garastas' remark, for these reasons was not seen as intended to publicly humiliate, debase or instigate hatred against black individuals because of their race.

"Now about the negro playing in Zalgiris, I would expel him immediately. Zygimantas Janavicius is twice as good as he is...", "Education, there's no education there, with only the blackies playing," Kauno Diena daily cited in the end of Oct. Garastas, 76, as saying with reference to Zalgiris players from the United States.

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