The article explores the proliferation of discourses on (anti) terror and the production of discursive "peripheries" that provide a rationale for social exclusion, ethnic intolerance, and governmental disciplining after 9/11. Preconditions and functionality of the vocabulary of terror in the construction

of the identity of the Roma ethnic minority in Lithuania are presented in the case study. The case study focuses on the conflict in late 2004 between state authorities and the Roma community settled in the Kirtimai district of the capital cit. KEYWORDS: public discourses, social enemies, Roma, terrorism, Lithuania

**********

One might argue that mythical notions can contribute to adequate redescriptions of the political condition after 9/11. Today the figure of the Chimera, referring to the bodily disparity of an imagined ancient creature, can be turned into a viable political metaphor to define incoherent but legitimate rationalities of present social and governmental practices. An expansion, multiplication, and omnipresence of global and local discourses on terror and antiterror structure public and scholarly debates, realities of international relations, and national security policies; antiterrorism becomes an imperative of institutional order: "The danger is still out there." (1)

However, the discourse on terror seems to have a centrifugal force as it is detected in various and, sometimes, unusual realms of social relations and communal interactions. It is salient to identify and explain the production, establishment, and functionality of such "peripheries" of the discourse on terror to detect cases when this political imperative tends to mutate into a rationale of social exclusion, ethnic intolerance, and structural violence. (2)

This article presents a case study of terror as a technique of social and governmental discipline; namely, an instrument to structure relations with the ethnic Roma minority in Lithuania. The article aims to untangle a complex nexus between local discourse on terror and the social construction of Roma identity to answer the following question: How could the local Roma be overtly labeled "terrorists" by state authorities without major and effective public dissent in autumn 2004?

The Roma--a Prescribed Terrorist Identity?

The analyzed case of discursive control of minority identity is relatively unconventional in international settings, and in Lithuania it is exceptional. The further analyzed public discourse does not concern migrants, newly established ethnic minorities, Islamic communities, or any external (foreign) threats. Rather, the Roma belong to one of the oldest ethnic groups in the country, having exercised an official right "to roam Lithuanian lands" since 1501. (3) The Roma community of fewer than three thousand people makes up less than 1 percent of Lithuania's total population. Roma are among the least numerous of ethnic minorities, along with the Latvian, German, Tatar, and Armenian communities. (4) Some 25 percent of the Roma community is located in the Kirtimai suburb on the outskirts of Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. Today the Roma community of Lithuania is not homogenous, although divisions and relationships inside the community are hardly known about by nonmembers, except for a language variation. (5)

In spite of a durable and relatively nonviolent historic interethnic cohabitation, the vocabulary of terror was evoked in a conflict with the Roma in autumn 2004. It represented the peak of tensions after unsuccessful attempts of the Vilnius municipality and police department to intensify a surveillance system in the Kirtimai settlement in Vilnius on the grounds of crime reduction and prevention of drug trafficking.

First, the Roma representatives expressed overt discontent with the installation of video surveillance cameras in their living area. Second, on October 6, 2004, a police station, newly established at the entrance to this Roma settlement, was burned down. The very next day, without an arsonist having been found, the police proclaimed the arson "an act of terror," a failed attempt to intimidate police officers and society. (6) A process under the respective article on terrorist activities of the criminal code of the Republic of Lithuania has been launched with a promise to "withstand the challenge of criminals" and "reinforce the control of the Roma settlement (7) with heavier police forces." (8) Arturas Zuokas, a former mayor of Vilnius city, declared: "The reaction to municipal attempts to curtail drug trafficking showed the criminal structures have been hit, reassurance of security in Kirtimai settlement means an impediment of the 'death trade.'" (9) Although the "criminals" were discursively differentiated from the Roma community, in December 2004, several shelters in Kirtimai were put under demolition on the order of the Vilnius municipality, on the grounds that these constructions were illegal.

One may argue that the official "hard" definition of arson was to increase the seriousness of a breach--to downplay the voice of Roma advocacy and to legitimate state efforts to regain control of the opaque and ungovernable city space. Moreover, the negligence of official charges received a queer consent of other actors in the public sphere. Lithuanian mass media, the civic "watchdog," also confined itself to official interpretations of events; even the major daily news outlets took the Roma as the main target for incrimination. The breaking news came under titles such as "Revenge of Gypsies to the Police," (10) "Gipsies Tolerated the Police Station for One Day," (11) "Gipsy Terrorists Attacked the Police of the Capital," (12) "Gipsies Rebuffed with Lightning Speed," (13) "Inhabitants of Shantytown Are Inflamed with Anger Toward Order-makers," (14) "A Fire Revenge of Gypsies Do Not Stop the Police." (15) In such a media-saturated environment the countervoice of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute (Lithuania) has been relatively weak in undermining the hegemonic accusatory discourse.

How could the notion of "terrorist" be evoked and discursively inscribed into the identity of the Roma minority? Before proceeding with the analysis, a couple of points are to be stressed. Firstly, the legal case on the arson was closed in summer 2006 after an arsonist was found and sentenced to twenty months in jail (both for the arson and another crime, a protection racket. (16) However, the news did not indicate the arson was an act of terror. Secondly, the media noted that the guilty person was not of Roma origin at all, but the scarcity of subsequent internet commentaries showed a lack of public attention and relative disinterest in a "true story" about the crime that contravened established popular narratives about the local Roma people.

Further discussion demonstrates that the combination and synergetic sociopolitical effects of at least three factors empowered peculiar governmental strategies of conflict management in Kirtimai settlement in late 2004. The lack of a domestication of discourse on (anti) terror in Lithuania, dominant and persistent negative popular attitudes toward the Roma minority, as well as ineffective state policies of social cohesion and minority integration, enabled an arbitrary grotesque extension of the notion of terror.

Terrorism as a Phantom of the Public Sphere

Jacques Derrida suggested being attentive to the phenomenon of language (naming, labeling, dating), arguing that, after the catastrophe in New York in 2001, 9/11 started to circulate as a bare index that represented more than a date: It revealed the absence of an adequate concept to identify and describe what happened. It unfolded the impotence of our language to overwhelm the density of meanings attached to the event. (17) Since then, terror and terrorism as semantic signs have been denied singularity of meaning and transparency. The notions are repeated, replicated, multiplied, and redefined in different ways and various contexts. We encountered a dissemination of meaning, in the words of Jean Baudrillard. Ter rorism as a sign became fractal, operating by "contiguity, fascination, and panic... a chain reaction by contagion." (18) However, the United States made great efforts to repress the multitude of interpretations of 9/11. The symbolic order of "antiterrorism" has been established on the international arena, backed by the establishment of the Coalition of the Willing and military campaigns. Antiterrorism became an imperative of security policies of states under a US-led NATO umbrella, and the domestication of (anti) terror discourse became a priority task for security and the makers of foreign policy in Lithuania, too.

I would argue that the domestication process of discourses on (anti) terror has not been completed in Lithuania because of its poor association with a manifest existential threat perceived by the society. The issue of terrorism and antiterrorism was promoted into the national political agenda by external political pressures; it was not securitized in the broader national public setting. Popular attitudes on the status of alleged terrorists and the means to fight this threat represent the ambivalence of discourse. Results of a global survey, "Voice of the People, 2004," showed that a larger share of the Lithuanian population was keen on rendering terrorists the same rights as exercised by indictable offenders and downplayed the efficiency of military action against terrorism if compared to the global moods or attitudes in neighboring Baltic states. (19)

The discourse on terror gained significance several times in the political life of Lithuania in the 1990s. Two streams of discourse can be identified during the period. The first trend concerns the discourse of building state sovereignty and symbolic delimitation from the former occupant. It refers to sabotage actions against the state allegedly backed by Russia. The second stream was mostly related to blackmailing and scuffling cases of local criminal forces in the early 1990s. At that time, the press noted that nobody knew where the line separating a terrorist act, criminal act, and hooliganism was drawn. (20) Besides, Lithuania endorsed the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1977) in 1997, and in 1998 introduced an article on terrorism into the country's criminal code. But until 9/11, the discourse on terrorism loomed only in relatively closed administrative routines and was not effective in the wider social arena. In summer 2001, a deliberate act of damaging railing on Lithuania's national day has been officially put under the criminal code title "Other National Crimes," and no reference to terrorism were made. (21)

The events of 9/11 presented a challenge to redefine the phenomenon of terrorism in legal, administrative, and state-security mechanisms. The ratification of a number of United Nations anti-terrorist conventions, participation of Lithuanian military forces in the US-led antiterrorist campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and curtailment of illegal financing of terrorist organizations (money laundering) constituted an official discourse of antiterrorism. Curiously enough, political authorities both downgraded and gave prominence to the issue, but they did not publicly present the legal definition of terrorism and the scope of potential antiterrorist activities. On the one hand, terrorism was considered an exogenous threat because the domestic situation and historical experience of the country was not conducive to the formation of local terrorist structures. On the other hand, the long-term National Program Against Terrorism (22) remained inaccessible to ordinary citizens, therefore an explicit and nationally enforced notion of terrorist activities was restricted to the limited "security community." Moreover, experts note that the definition of terrorism is rather incoherent in Lithuania's criminal code. (23) The combination of the dominant perception of terror as an exogenous, distant threat, the closure of official discourse, and its irrelevance to ongoing Lithuanian domestic political and social life allow the consideration of terrorism as a communication phenomenon--a product of the public sphere.

The public sphere implies social networking wherein the engagement in debates over the general rules governing political community takes place. (24) The social notions and meanings are negotiated, contested, and formed in the complex polyphony of the public dialogue, at interchanges of opinions and a saturation of rumors. If we consider communication to be a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed, (25) this interaction shapes meanings of terror and images of actors facing and debating political realities. In the absence of direct encounters with debated phenomena, the social centrality of "the window to the outer world"--mass media--is vitally important. "The myth of mediated centre" (26) functions as a means of symbolic production, a channel to witnessing manifestations of distant violence and imagining oneself safely entering the world of terror.

In the case of Lithuania, an absence of direct and severe violence (similar to attacks in New York, Madrid, or London) on the national territory allows definition of terrorism as an intersubjective communication phenomenon, mostly enforced by practices of mass mediation. The dynamics and variation of discursive notions of terror in the Lithuanian media-saturated public sphere is a complex issue; however, it is to be noted that even after 9/11, media practices hardly established rules of when and how the peculiar vocabulary of terrorism was to be evoked. The permanent references to the faraway lands of outlaw, violence, and death (Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, the Caucasus) and strikes in the vicinity (Spain, the United Kingdom) construct terrorism as a heavily value-laden notion with poor attachment to the local existential space. Violence as an attention-pulling phenomenon prone to what is considered to be news-worthiness becomes an outcome of habitual process and functions as a peculiar technical routine of public mediators. (27) The negativity combined with repetitiveness, and irrelevance for the daily life of citizens, characterize the mainstream public communication on terror in Lithuanian upmarket mass media, and in the national tabloids human-interest stories can be terror-related. (28)

The lack of effective domestication of the discourse on (anti) terror resulted in the absence of rigid principles and rules of "Who, when, and how" can use discourses on terror in the national public sphere. In a nutshell, the control mechanisms of the discourse were relatively weak. Under these circumstances, the state authorities could take advantage of the fluidity of such a discursive formation in the conflict with the Roma community. On the one hand, in late 2004 the police were relatively unrestricted in setting up the content of terrorism and temporally fixing it to include meaning a deliberate malign arson and infringement of legitimate policing of public order. The surplus of meaning of the term terrorism was reduced, anchoring it to a "malicious attempt by criminals to intimidate law-enforcement structures and society," (29) even if the validity of this anchoring was not apparent. On the other hand, the vocabulary was deliberately chosen to exploit the normative aspects of the discourse: The naming of the arson as a terrorist act intended to give the event an utmost salience and importance, to stress the extremity of the malignancy so as to make it worthy of the strictest punishment.

However, only Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty could freely choose and play with meanings of words. (30) The indeterminacy of the discourse on terror does not mean the total arbitrariness of its exercise, because the power to redescribe depends on the resistance potential of the entity under redescription as well as upon the legitimacy of this attempt in the wider political and cultural arena.

Popular Image of the Roma: Inevitable Inside Outsiders

Burdens of Interethnic Cohabitation

During the 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All, the Roma remained the least wanted members of the community in Lithuania. Tolerance toward representatives of this ethnic minority remained extremely poor.

Human rights experts note that attitudes of Lithuanians toward the Roma people are explicitly negative. (31) They remain the least wanted neighbors, encountering stronger social rejection than minorities based on sex orientation, the Chechen minority, refugees, and Muslims. (32) Nearly 80 percent of respondents asked about the subject do not wish Roma people in their neighborhood, and the numbers grew from 59 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2005. Nearly 70 percent of respondents indicated their opinion about the Roma had become worse or definitely worse over the past fifteen years. Moreover, the recent surveys show the majority of the population thinks that the present situation of the Roma is not worse at the moment if compared to earlier periods, that international organizations overstate factual problems of this minority, and that the Roma themselves are to be blamed for their problems and poverty. (33)

Surprisingly enough, the level of intolerance clashes with the popular perception of ethnic discrimination in the country. A 2006 Eurobarometer survey on discrimination across the European Union shows that the Lithuanian population does not perceive discrimination of minorities in the country: first, the perception of ethnic discrimination is lower if compared to the EU average; second, a substantially smaller number of respondents consider that belonging to a different ethnic origin is a disadvantage (27%, compared with the EU average of 62%); third, a smaller percentage thinks that being Roma is a disadvantage (67%, compared with the EU average of 77%). (34) The parliament, mass media, and the government are considered the most important institutions to combat discrimination, though in the EU generally it is civic society--schools and universities, families, and the media--that is given the most important role.

This tendency implies that a substantial share of the Lithuanian population does not recognize discrimination on ethnic origin, and individuals in the same group do not themselves feel responsible for eliminating social risks, vulnerabilities, and hostilities. However, sociologists note that true tolerance cannot be limited to patience and bearing: It must extend to the recognition of the other, respect, and the abandonment of violence. (35)

Reproduction of Popular Imaginary Through the Media Lens

No society is totally immune to ethnic intolerance; however, the devaluation of the problem is prominent in post-Soviet communities. (36) Empirical research proves that channelled media representations mirror as well as mold and frame ethnic relations in everyday interactions. (37) Scholars and human rights activists stress a negative bias in the selection and framing of issues related to the local Roma community--"Their collective identity is permanently moulded by scandals, police reports and repeating stereotypes." (38)

The mass-mediated publicity enforces crude stereotyping in terms of criminalization, drug trafficking, violence, poverty, and attribution of asocial behavior. Roma are the most heavily criminalized ethnic group in Lithuanian mass media, and the Roma people are subject to the worst representations as the least socially integrated, exotic but also deviant, socially insecure, inscrutable, and manipulative group. (39) News reports on Roma are often negative, and a habit of indicating the ethnic origin of an individual in criminal news has been established. Moreover, besides reporting being reactive rather than proactive, there is a lack of debate focused specifically on the social problems of this ethnic minority--unemployment, housing, education, and discrimination. Thus Roma are not seen as genuine members, "insiders" of the social and cultural life of the country. They are visible in the public sphere, but their publicity is framed and controlled by dominating negative discourses, hardly influenced by communicative initiatives of the Roma themselves.

As comparative empirical studies show, once fixed, negative discourse on immigrant or ethnic identities is prone to domination and self-reproduction by repetition. (40) Inner conflicts in the community, relatively weak public activism, normalization of social isolation of the Roma as well as unfavorable public feelings would generate a vacuum of pressure on national policymakers if not on the activities of the nongovernmental sector.

Monologue of the Public Sphere:

Images of the Roma in Internet News Commentaries

The mass-media discourse in Lithuania is seen as rather modest in terms of intolerance levels if compared to internet commentaries, which range from temperate to the strongest forms of verbal discrimination. (41) Although legal norms are relatively efficient in precluding overt discrimination in mass-media content, intolerance looms in anonymous discourses in virtual space. (42) Therefore, internet commentaries containing opinions, attitudes, and values regarding the Roma in Lithuania are the main area of interest in the research for this article. A focus on public responses to journalistic messages, not solely the content of these messages, allows a broader view on social and political conditions that allow formation of the particular images of the Roma community. In comparison with press, television, or radio, the internet offers a higher degree of interactivity and nonprescripted, relatively free commenting by publics that otherwise remain rather invisible.

The internet, specifically the website delfi.lt, the most popular news portal in Lithuanian, was chosen for the analysis of the construction of the Roma identity in the national public sphere. That website was chosen for at least two reasons: first, delfi.lt is the most popular and strongest national internet news portal. Launched at the beginning of 2000, it has a current average of 0.3 million readers per day. (43) Portals of the Delfi group in the three Baltic states attract more than 0.7 million readers per day and take 45 to 48 percent of the internet market in the region. (44) Managers of delfi.lt claim that "60 percent of delfi.lt readers are over twenty-four years old, educated individuals, receiving average or higher income." (45) Second, delfi.lt news is the most heavily commented on online by its readers, and no other national news portal enjoys such activism of its users. Therefore, public commentaries on news about the Roma in Kirtimai district, published on delfi.lt during the period from September 2004 to June 2006, are selected to reveal popular moods at the moment of the appearance of terror vocabulary in the rhetoric of state authorities regarding relationship with the Roma. Sixteen news reports have been selected on the basis of their relevance to the conflict under investigation and the amplitude of readers' comments on them. The selected reports generated more than 2,616 short commentaries from delfi.lt readers. News reports were chosen to see how images of Roma are constructed in the news and if representations of Roma in the media correlate with attitudes toward the minority, expressed in the commentaries on news reports.

Three groups of agenda-setters in media messages can be distinguished: news reports dominated by state authorities; reports questioning the position and policies of state authorities; and reports defending Roma by human rights institutions. (46) The reactions of delfi.lt readers to state actions, views on media coverage of the conflict and the Roma's advocacies, as well as strategies and types of social "labelling" of Roma, embedded in internet commentaries, are the main objects of qualitative content analysis in the following paragraphs.

One should note that an explication of the Roma identity and the construction of social exclusion in internet commentaries was a reaction to the following sequence of news: First came rumors about the authorities' intentions to relocate the Roma settlement; then came news of increased policing and installation of the video surveillance cameras at the Kirtimai site, followed by reports of the arson of the new, permanent, police station there and the official discourse on terror. Next came the anti-drug trafficking raids and the destruction of shelters at the site by order of city authorities, the Roma's claims for damage to their property, and advocacy by human rights bodies. Finally, the arson conviction was reported.

The idea to resettle Roma and to eliminate the Kirtimai site was met with great approval of delfi.lt readers, though it went together with some expressed doubts on the possibility of avoiding coexistence with this ethnic group. There were voices suggesting moving the Vilnius Roma to a poor corner of the country (Didziasalis) or an area dominated by other ethnic minorities (Visaginas) or simply to expel all Roma from the country (to Romania or Russia). Nevertheless, it was admitted that the Roma were going to return to rich Vilnius, where making a living was easier.

The need for coexistence raised an issue of cordoning threats and risks emanating from the Kirtimai settlement. Commentators denigrated protests from Roma leaders against intensified surveillance of the site and unanimously supported arguments of the city authorities and police that increased control was legitimate: it had to help to reduce drug-trafficking "business" flourishing in the city area. The Roma's resentment was seen as a manipulative attempt to cover and sustain illegal activities. A letter to the European Court of Human Rights was parodied: "Lithuanian policemen put video surveillance cameras by our slums and we cannot sell drugs easily. Help! Stop the discrimination!" (47) An expression of regret for the damage to the young lives of non-Roma drug addicts dominated the comments. Drug dealers, specifically the Roma, were seen as guilty, but not the addicts.

The peak of tension and public resentment on October 6 and 7, 2004, in the aftermath of the arson, brought several hundred comments. (48) The event was interpreted as the launching of "war" between the town community (represented by the police and the former city mayor Arturas Zuokas) and the aggressive, threatening criminal minority. The arson was presented as a natural, expected incident, a challenge to righteous town dwellers and the state that protected their interests. Therefore, stricter means of policing, control, curfew, the introduction of military forces, and ghettoizing were welcomed. The discourse fully reinforced the position of the authorities. It was also strengthened by popular agreement that Roma were unwilling to take on any decent, legal activities: "To make a Romani work is a 'Sisyphian tasks,' (49) and the trait was said to be "genetically coded" in the nature of the Roma ethnic minority. Hence, any attempts to "civilize" them by creating and offering work places and introducing any other positive strategies were thought to be pointless.

The peak of conflict, in autumn 2004, coincided with general parliamentary elections that year, and Zuokas, the former mayor, led a Liberal and Central Union in the election campaign. Analysis of the controversies regarding the personality of Zuokas as a political figure is beyond the scope of this article; however, it is to be noted that the enforcement of policing at the Kirtimai site was soon interpreted (by delfi.lt commentators) as a PR campaign in the mass media, a political spectacle to attract votes in national elections but not an attempt to solve the drug-trafficking problem in the town. (50) Nevertheless, the recognition of potential manipulation of the Roma issue by the city authorities did not alter a negative stance toward the Roma community. On the contrary, their imagined identity was "enriched" by the suspicion that Roma deceived the whole city community by secret collaboration with Zuokas--informal backing of their illegal business by political power. Other voices welcomed any attempts to "establish order" at the Kirtimai site, disregarding the political rationalities of such activities.

On December 2 and 3, the Vilnius municipality demolished six shelters in the Kirtimai settlement, arguing that dwellings in the neighborhood of the shelters were at risk of fire and that further expansion of the settlement (where drug trafficking was allegedly increasingly widespread) was to be stopped. The parliamentary ombudsman held that the demolition of these dwellings violated the legal rights and interests of their residents. (51) However, the initiative to raise the question of the Roma's rights, advocacy initiated by human rights bodies, and attempts by such bodies to revise the legality of the demolition of housing in December 2004 were downplayed in delfi.lt news commentaries.

Commentators dismissed arguments about minority discrimination and that there had been violation of human rights by using a peculiar conception of fairness. It was stressed that, while the same constitution, legal norms, and rules applied to all and that there was no citizenship guaranteeing rights but not requiring duties, the Kirtimai Roma demanded only rights; the Roma claimed benefits that other groups of society could not claim; an ordinary Lithuanian citizen was conceptualized as an autonomous subject, sustained by personal effort and endeavor, making no pretensions for state support.

In this argument, the responsibility for the poor social status and conditions of Roma was attributed to the minority themselves. The idea of positive discrimination of the Roma ethnic minority by the state was seen as an unfair act, (52) discriminatory to the rest of the population, while Vilnius citizens were perceived as victims of illegal activities by the Roma: "Isn't the poisoning of the nation important? " (53) The principle of the uniform application of the same rules and laws justified the demolition of "illegal" housing on state-owned land. A formal rule, applying to all, was to be the main criterion for evaluating Roma actions. The public and legal advocacy of the Roma was treated as a careless ignorance of a looming threat, an outcome of a gap between political elite and ordinary citizens in perceptions of crucial social problems, or even a conspiracy between the advocates and the criminals. The harm done by the destruction of several shelter houses was considered insignificant in comparison with the moral and social harm done by drug dealers. Therefore, claims for compensation were interpreted as an aggressive illegitimate impudence.

During the period under review, the essence of the disciplined identity was expressed by a strong refusal to use the word Roma instead of the traditional and vernacular Gypsies in internet commentaries (contemporary scholarly and legal documents use the words interchangeably). The word Roma is rejected as an artificial element of the discourse, a euphemism that is installed by authorities and human rights bodies to grant this ethnic minority a higher, but undeserved, social status--an attempt to mask the negative connotations of the established notion of Gypsy. (54) Overall, minor countervoices and neutral imagery of the Roma had only a very weak presence in the online commentaries, and they were met by overt hostility and seen as misunderstandings. There were attempts to equate representatives of the Roma minority with the rest of the population, to ground their behavior, to look for the roots of their present situation, or to shame radical commentators, but they were mostly ineffective in that they met with strong counteraction in the discourse.

One might argue--to use terms from the anthropological notions of Douglas (55)--that the discourse of symbolic pollution and impurity pervades the realm of the internet public sphere over the analyzed period. The concept of symbolic pollution allows conceptualization of the production and meaning of social exclusions; it explains how communities differentiate themselves from one another and meet a need to preserve social boundaries. Symbolic pollution occurs when there is a settled order, a customary arrangement of relations, and there is then a breach of that order. Public discourse then functions as a mechanism of purification, a normative cleansing of community. Delfi.lt commentaries encourage a complement to Douglas's ideas because the impurity of the Roma is constructed as a permanent, inevitable, fixed element that can hardly be changed.

Cultural geographers observe that the idea of symbolic pollution refers not only to human bodies and relationships but also to distinct sites or social spaces. The function and meaning of the space require adherence to particular modes of behavior; improper conduct may be deviant because the place determines the evaluation of an act--its appropriateness. (56) Impropriety is of a normative nature here, and the behavior that does not correspond to the symbolic requirements of a particular space (church, shop, market) is considered to be abnormal, deviant, dangerous, and polluting, thereby asking for intervention to restore and sustain the order of things. Any transgression has political implications, too: Violators may be isolated and estranged from the fabric of community by the determination of other community members to "cleanse" the space. In the case of the Roma conflict, the Kirtimai settlement--taboras--circles the peculiar space differentiated from the rest of the cityscape. Poverty, disorder, deviance, illegal activities, drug addicts, death are integrated into the description of taboras and naturalized. The overall symbolic order and balance between taboras space and city space is sustained until the disorder is contained within the space of Roma community. The containment is guaranteed only by the permanent control of the overspill of threats and by surveillance over the dangerous, segregated and semiautonomous site. As the land does not legally belong to the Roma, and the space is not privatized, state intervention and control are legitimate.

Thus, the dominant hostile discourse toward the Kirtimai Roma community can be explained in the following way. The active stance of the Roma--attempts of Roma representatives to defend their property, their rights; the rise of a public voice and advocacy by human rights institutions--represented a transgression from the popular imaginary of Kirtimai taboras space. Policing, surveillance, compliance, and silence traditionally describe this space. Therefore, strong discursive attempts were made to secure a long-standing symbolic order to bring Roma back to silence and passivity, to counter any effort to pull this minority group out of the margins of social space. "Cleansing" of the mainstream public sphere meant restoration of the ordinary settled relationship between dominant and subordinated ethnic communities. (57)

During the analyzed period, the online space was a monologue in terms of representation of Roma. Practices of policing and surveillance of the Roma were considered on the basis of the interests of "the rest of the city community," which were incompatible with Roma interests. State policies to draw the Roma back to their own segregated life, to tame a source of disorder and threat to the localized and defined place, were supported by delfi.lt readers. The symbolic order of the Kirtimai site was seen as repugnant to the norms ruling the rest of the population. (58)

The State in (In)action

The popular imagery, and state policies toward the Roma minority, generated a closed circuit of permanent reproduction of social marginalization. In 2006 international human rights bodies presented a critical evaluation of Lithuanian governmental strategies to promote social integration of the Roma. The recent report of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) noted that the members of the Roma communities in Lithuania faced prejudice, disadvantage, and discrimination across many areas of life, spanning from education to employment, housing, health, access to personal documents, and relations with the police, although ECRI welcomed the adoption of the Programme for the Integration of Roma into Lithuanian Society 2000-2004. (59) However, it was noted that the involvement of Roma representatives in the elaboration of the program had been very limited.

Similar observations have been made by national human rights bodies, who argue that state attempts to elaborate a long-term comprehensive strategy to promote equal opportunities for the Roma communities of Lithuania have been relatively unsuccessful. The 2004-2006 national programs on social security and inclusion recognized refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers and Roma as socially vulnerable groups, but these groups are no longer included in policy documents for the period of 2006-2008. (60) The instruments to improve the situation of the Roma and other vulnerable social groups, presented in the National Anti-Discrimination Program, 2006-2008, are not active, direct, and sufficient. (61) ECRI recommends that any new program aimed at the integration of the Roma population be based on a concept of integration as a two-way process, where both majority and minority groups are seen as responsible for building a cohesive society. To this end, ECRI strongly recommends that the new program include measures targeted at the non-Roma population and aimed at countering societal prejudice and discrimination toward this part of the Lithuanian population. (62)

* * *

The above case study shows that the grotesque intermingling of the Roma identity and threat discourses was empowered by a complex of structural circumstances. An incongruency between the harm inflicted by the arson of the police station and the weight of official charges was not highlighted in the public sphere.

The lack of domestication of terror discourse on the national level, the availability of its discursive resources, chronic social marginalization, and permanently reproduced negative visibility of the Kirtimai Roma made them vulnerable to the implementation of drastic disciplining strategies. The popular indifference regarding the inefficiency of any social policies and positive state action toward the Roma community extends the field of legitimate maneuver of city authorities and police. Lithuanian experts on human rights note that "it seems unawareness of what to do about some social groups leads to their exclusion or disregard." (63) the important problems remain unsolved because of lack of the political will and self-determination to act.

The primary appeal to the security of "the rest" of the town community, and stress on one malady--drug trafficking--neglected the full scope of the problems that Roma face. The active and effective measures of positive social integration are replaced by negative practices of surveillance, taming, and ghettoizing. An enforced principle of self-control--the essence of Foucauldian panopticon--means transfer of the burden of urgent social issues onto the shoulders of the minority community itself.

Will the hope of "improved behavior" solve all hardship of structural violence? In autumn 2004, state authorities arbitrarily extended the discourse on terror to legitimate a dubious campaign of policing and to threaten that the resistance of the Roma would meet the strictest counteraction. It was a strategic speech act, committed to reduce the complexity of social space, a technique to deal with structural problems related to ethnic minority issues.

It is important to note that reference to "an act of terror" existentially diverges from any constructive policy because it allows and promotes destructive tactics and unilateral violent policies. It does not anticipate any communality or sensibility toward and responsibility for the "inside outsiders." This case study shows how present imperatives of globally saturating (anti) terror discourse disseminate and penetrate most distant social spaces and highlights how discursive resources can serve governmental practices of social disciplining.

Appendix: List of Articles Analyzed

"Sostines cigonai su nerimu//laukia iskeldinimo" (20 September 2004)//www.delfi.lt (51 comments).

BNS, "Tabore irengta policijos posta cigonai skus Strasburui" (4 October 2004)//www.delfi.lt (433 comments).

BNS, "Vilniaus romams siulo dirbti viesuosius darbus" (5 October 2004)//www.delfi.It (96 comments).

BNS, "Sulaikyti padegimu cigonu tabore itariami narkomanai" (6 October,//www.delfi.It (440 comments).

BNS, "Sulaikyti nauji itariamieji padegimu cigonu tabore" (7 October //www.delfi.It (61 comments).

BNS, "Vilniaus policija nepalieka ramybeje cigonu taboro" (8 October2 004)//www.delfi.It (97 comments).

R. Cekutis, "A.Zuoko rinkimine akcija-atrakcija tabore" (12 October 2004)//www.delfi.It (278 comments).

BNS, "Policijos postas tabore--brangus rinkimu triukas?" (13 October 2004)//www.delfi.It (141 comments).

"Prasau zodzio: Kuo baigsis cigonu ir policijos karas?" (14 October 2004)//www.delfi.It (74 comments).

"Policija neigia, kad veiksmai cigonu tabore--rinkimines kampanijos dalis"(15 October 2004)//www.delfi.It (31 comments).

BNS, "Seimo kontroliere sustabde pastatu griovima tabore" (6 December 2004)//www.delfi.It (146 comments).

TV3, "Romai is Vilniaus miesto savivaldybes reikalauja 200 tukst. Litu" (5 January 2005)//www.delfi.It (180 comments).

LNK, "Cigonai uz nugriautus namus reikalauja 2 mln. Lt" (27 January 2005)//www.delfi.lt (216 comments).

K.Aleknaite, "Romu padetis Lietuvoje prasteja, ju pusen stoja teisininkai" (31 March 2005)//www.delfi.It (143 comments).

ELTA, "Griaudama romu taboro bustus savivaldybe diskriminavo gyventojus, teigia Seimo kontrole" (1 September 2005)//www.delfi.It (220 comments).

J. Vanagas, "Nuteistas Vilniaus tabore policijos posta padeges vyras" (5 June 2006)//www.delfi.It (9 comments).

Notes

(1.) BBC, Germany Warns of Terrorist Threat (August 20, 2006): http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5267920.stm.

(2.) J. Galtung, "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research," Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167-191.

(3.) Y. Plasseraud, Mazumos: tautiniu ir etniniu mazumu istudij vadas (Vilnius: Apostrofa, 2006).

(4.) The data of the population 2001 census is presented by the Department of National Minorities and Lithuanians Living Abroad under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania: http://www.tmid.lt.

(5.) Historians agree the Roma arrived in Lithuania from Poland around the fourteenth century. In 1860s Lithuania there was a new migration wave of Roma from Romania and Hungary. The Roma of Lithuania heavily suffered Nazi holocaust and later underwent Soviet assimilation policies. Today the Roma community comprises three groups. Litovska Roma is the biggest group, encompassing the Roma of the Vilnius region that has named itself Polska Roma since the 1930s. Lotfitka Roma live in Northern Lithuania, in the towns of Zagaer, Mazeikiai, and Siauliai, and have affiliations in neighboring Latvia. The third group arrived in Lithuania from Moldova in the 1940s after World War II and settled in a Vilnius suburb. Later, the Roma of the Vilnius region and others of more distant regions started to establish themselves in the neighborhood. Therefore the present Kirtimai site encompasses two settlements of first and later newcomers. For more information see V. Toleikis, Lietvos cigonai: tarp praeities ir dabarties (Vilnius: Garnelis, 2001), and S. Vaitiekus, ed., Cigonai Europoje ir Lietuvoje (Vilnius: Tyto alba, 1998).

(6.) ELTA, Tabore irengto posto padegima policija laiko teroro aktu (October 6, 2007): http://www.omni.lt.

(7.) It is important to note a peculiar wording. In official and public discourses the word taboras, referring to mobile encampment (not a permanent settlement), has been used to describe the site of Kirtimai inhabited by the Roma community in Vilnius.

(8.) D. Saluga, Vilniaus savivaldybe nepasiduos kovoje su narkotiku platintojais (October 6, 2007): http://www.vilnius.lt.

(9.) Ibid.

(10.) S. Malinauskas and D. Nagele, "Cigonau kerstas policijai," Vakaro zinios (October 7, 2007): 4.

(11.) ELTA, "Policijos posta cigonai pakente tik para," Lietuvos zinios (October 7, 2007): p. 4.

(12.) A. Gurevicius, "Cigonu teroristai atakavo sostines policija," Respublika (October 7, 2007): p. 7.

(13.) M. Kuizinaite, "Cigonu atkirtis buvo zaibiskas," Lietuvos rytas (October 7, 2007): pp. 1, 6.

(14.) M. Kuizinaite, "Lusnyno gyventojai dega pykciu tvarkdariams," Sostine (October 9, 2007): pp. 1, 3.

(15.) "Cigonu ugnies kerstas nestabdo policijos uzmoju," Lietuvos rytas (October 9, 2007): p. 4.

(16.) J. Vanagas, "Nuteistas Vilniaus tabore policijos posta padeges vyras" (June 5, 2006): http://www.delfi.lt.

(17.) G.Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

(18.) J. Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majority (New York: Semiotext, 1983): p. 51.

(19.) Just under one-half of the population (49%) responded that alleged terrorists should be rendered the same rights as indictable offenders. The numbers in Latvia and Estonia were, respectively, 60 and 70 percent. The global average is 62 percent. In Lithuania 51 percent of the population of do not agree or relatively disagree that military action is the most effective means to fight terrorism (Latvia, 56%; Estonia, 62%). The TNS-Gallup survey "Voice of the People 2004" was made in sixty states around the world in July-August 2004: http://www.tns-gallup.lt.

(20.) J.Damulyte, G. Sarafinas, "Lietuvoje nenubaustas n vienas teroristas," Veidas 43 (October 31, 1997).

(21.) A. Kuzmickas, "Valstybes diena--diversant ispuolis," Lietuvos zinios (July 7, 2001).

(22.) The National Security Strategy, adopted May 28, 2002.

(23.) A. Gutauskas, "Terorizmo baudziamasis teisinis ivertinimas pagal naujaji Lietuvos RespubHkos baudziamj kodeksa," Teise 54 (2005): 1-13.

(24.) J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1994).

(25.) J. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Winchester: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

(26.) N. Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (London: Routledge, 2003).

(27.) H. Molotch and M. Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals," American Sociological Review 39, no. 1 (1974): 101-112.

(28.) INNA/Trinity Mirror, "Negaliu gyventi be Beno," Ekstra zinios (February 13, 2006).

(29.) ELTA, Cigonu taboro pasoneje irengto posto padegima pareigunai laiko teroro aktu (October 6, 2004): http://www.elta.lt.

(30 ) L. Carroll, Alisa Stebuklu salyje ir Veidrodziu karalysteje (Vilnius: Vyturys, 1991), p. 170.

(31.) Reports on Human Rights Condition in Lithuania, Human Rights Monitoring Institute, 2003, 2004, 2006: http://www.hrmi.lt.

(32.) Report, Discrimination of the Roma in the Employment Sector, Human Rights Monitoring Institute: http://www.hrmi.lt.

(33.) N. Kasatkina, ed., Etninis nepakantumas: Etniskumo studijos, 1 (Vilnius: Eugrimas, 2006), pp. 175-177.

(34.) The period of survey was June 13 to July 4, 2006. The results of the survey are presented by the Office of Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson: http://www.lygybe.lt.

(35.) N. Kasatkina, "Visuomeniniu normu dichotomija: tolerancija versus nepakantumas," in N. Kasatkina, ed., Etninis nepakantumas. Etniskumo studijos, 1 (Vilnius: Eugrimas, 2006), pp. 7-18.

(36.) Ibid.

(37.) V. Beresneviciute and M. Frejute-Rakauskiene, "Etnine tematika ir nepakantumas Lietuvos ziniasklaidoje: dienrasciu analize," in N. Kasatkina, ed., Etninis nepakantumas: Etniskumo studijos, 1 (Vilnius: Eugrimas, 2006), pp. 19-44.

(38.) A. Tereskinas, Lietuvos ziniasklaida ir romai: tarp skandalo, policijos pranesimu ir besikartojanciu stereotipu (2002): http://www.kulturosvartai.lt.

(39.) A. Tereskinas, Minority Politics: Mass Media and Civil Society in Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland (2002): http://www.policy.hu/tereskinas/Research 2002.html.

(40.) Beresneviciute and Frejute-Rakauskiene, note 37.

(41.) L. Donskis, Be pykcio (April 25, 2005), LTV (a program of the national television broadcaster); an online conference with Tadas Leoncikas, a head of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute (April 18, 2005).

(42.) L. Auskalniene, "Etninis nepakantumas Lietuvos internetineje ziniasklaidoje: komentarai internete," in Etninis nepakantumas. Etniskumo studijos, 1 (Vilnius: Eugrimas, 2006), pp. 45-58.

(43.) The data on the reach of delfi. It is presented by an international communications company," MediaHouse" (Spring 2007).

(44.) Kompanija "Ekspress Group" isigijo naujienu portala "Delfi" (August 2, 2007): http:// verslas.banga. It/It /spaudai.full/46blec40f2a38.

(45.) Information provided by delfi.It on http://www.delfi.lt/help/about .php?I=f. For the comprehensive data on demographic characteristics of internet users in Lithuania, see survey at http:// www.tns-gallup.lt/lt/disp.php/lt_surveys/ It _surveys_116?ref=/lt/disp.php/lt_surveys?findsubm = l&srch=internet&okay=OK

(46.) See the list of the articles in the appendix.

(47.) BNS, Tabore irengta policijos Posta cigonai skus Strasburui (September 4, 2004): http://www.delfi.lt.

(48.) BNS, Sulaikyti padegimu cigonu tabore itariami narkomanai (October 6, 2004): http://www.delfi.lt.

(49.) BNS, Vilniaus romams siulo dirbti viesuosius darbus (October 5, 2004): http://www.delfi.lt.

(50.) The dailies and internet news sources promoted the idea. See R. Cekutis, A. Zuoko rinkimine akcija-atrakcija tabore (October 12, 2007): http://www.delfi.lt.

(51.) Seimo Kontroliere sustabde pastatu griovima tabore, BNS (December 6, 2004).

(52.) However, the respective EU directives define positive discrimination and do not forbid member states to apply special measures to help vulnerable social groups.

(53.) BNS, note 51.

(54.) A. Fraser, Cigonai (Vilnius: Tyto alba, 2001).

(55.) M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 1994).

(56.) T. Cresswell, "Weeds, Plagues, and Bodily Secretions: A Geographical Interpretation of Metaphors of Displacement," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87 (1997): 330-345.

(57.) D. L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

(58 ) A. Gurevicius, "Taboras--neiveikiamas mirties fabrikas," Respublika (October 7, 2004): 1, 4.

(59.) The report is available on the official ECRI website: http://www.coe.int/t/e/human_rights/ecri/1-ECRI/2-Country-by-country_approach/ Lithuania/.

(60.) V. Beresneviciute, Poziuris ietnines mazumas turetu buti lankstesnis ir kompetentingesnis (May 5, 2007): http://www.bernardinai.lt.

(61.) The National Report, "Implementation of Human Right in Lithuania, 2006": http://www.balsas.lt.

(62.) ECRI, note 59.

(63.) Beresneviciute, note 60.

Jurate Kavaliauskaite *

* Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. E-mail: jurate.kavaliauskaite@tspmi.vu.lt.