Lithuanian Minister of National Defence: *gay or rapist?

[Rudis]

On January 19, a Lithuania's spokeswoman for the Minister of National Defence, Vita Ramanauskaitė stated that hackers hacked the site tv3.lt, after which there appeared a fake news story about Minister of Defence Raimundas Karoblis. The fake news article claimed that Karoblis allegedly harassed Ridas Jasiulionis, a journalist at the Ziniu Radijas radio station, and admitted being a gay.

The article was written on behalf of a journalist, Eglė Šantaraitė, in which she cites the words of the well-known actor and journalist Ridas Jasiulionis about harassment by Raimundas Karoblis that happened after the interview.

According to the actor who played in "Unforgiven Love", "The Way Home", "The Taste of Snow" TV series, this happened on May 13, 2017 after an interview on "How did the diplomat and the trade negotiator become a Minister of Defence?" in the framework of "Who is who in Lithuania" program on Žinių radijas radio station.
"I was in a state of shock when the minister put his hand on my knee, I did not expect this from a man holding a high position in the Ministry of National Defence," said Ridas Jasiulionis.

Moreover, according to the author of the article, Eglė Šantaraitė, other eight active and former diplomats of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Karoblis worked all his life and even became a Vice-minister in 2015, spoke about the harassments. The victims said that Karoblis from time to time massaged their shoulders, touched stomach, draw himself closer to them and hugged them.

The official version of the Ministry of National Defence is that this story is a fake. However, a number of questions arise from the facts considered:

why there are no refuting arguments made by Karoblis himself;

why there are no refuting arguments made by the actor Jasiulionis, who is a victim of harassment;

and why the authorities investigate the fact of hacking attack, rather than sexual violence;

and maybe it's just an attempt to hide the facts of a successful journalistic investigation?

There are more questions than answers.

I would like to believe in the improbability of sexual harassment by the Minister of Defence of a NATO member country.

It should be noted that the Lithuanian propaganda machine began to work in the opposite direction, justifying Nazi criminals, "forest brothers", making them heroes, even despite their cooperation with KGB. Therefore, the fact of concealing the violence involving a high-ranking military official of Lithuania is the most appropriate version.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I would like to believe in the improbability of sexual harassment by the Minister of Defence of a NATO member country.

I don't know about this line. People in positions of power across all walks of life have been abusing those positions to sexually harass their coworkers, underlings and business contacts forever and I can't see why the military would be different from any other industry.

I agree with you that the fact that they're circling their wagons and doing a Trumpesque assault on their attackers to divert the conversation as opposed to looking into the allegations is a serious red flag. While everyone deserves an presumption of innocence, if you act guilty then people are correct to make an assumption of guilt.

For instance, if a man is dancing around the body of his ex-wife who had a restraining order against him while waving a gun in the air and singing "Ding dong, the witch is dead', it's reasonable to go with the default assumption that the reason she's dead is because that guy just shot her. Similarly, if a government starts acting like they're conducting a coordinated disinformation campaign to protect a guilty official, making the default assumption that they're conducting a coordinated disinformation campaign to protect a guilty official is a fine assumption to make. One can always change their position from the initial one if new information arises, but it does look like they're admitting this guy is guilty and trying to derail the conversation about it.