Every year on the evening of January 12th, huge bonfires blaze in front of the parliament in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. You remember the frosty January 1991, when hundreds of thousands of people gathered here and on the TV tower hill, opposed the advancing Soviet tanks and were ready with their bare hands to defend the independence of Lithuania, which had been regained almost a year earlier.
March 11, 2020 will mark the 30th anniversary of the day when my country announced its return to freedom and statehood after half a century of occupation. In its agony, the Soviet Union tried in vain to break an economic blockade in Lithuania. Then the aggressor attempted an armed coup. Armored vehicles moved out on January 11th, and the radio station was soon swarming with armed Soviet soldiers, and broadcasts were broken off.
On that fateful night of January 13, 1991, the television tower was stormed. The defenders tried with all their might to block the entrance. The tanks rolled straight towards the unarmed people, and fire was opened. That night, 14 defenders of freedom were killed and more than 700 injured. The subversives were unable to occupy Parliament, from which neither the MPs nor the voluntary defenders withdrew.
Judgments after three decades
The news of the bloody events went around the world. Large protests took place in Riga, Kiev, Warsaw and even Russia. In the same year the western states, above all Iceland, began to declare their support and recognition of the independence of Lithuania.
After nearly three decades of trial following the events of January 13, 1991, 67 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were sentenced to imprisonment between 4 and 14 years for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Most of the defendants were sentenced in absentia because Russia and Belarus refused to extradite them.
The Russian investigative authority announced last December that it had brought charges against three Lithuanian judges for allegedly unlawful convictions of Russian citizens. Although Lithuania declared its independence on March 11, 1990, Russian officials believed that in January 1991 the country was still part of the USSR and that the convicts had only done their duty and maintained public order. Lithuania immediately announced that it would request Interpol to reject the Russian request to persecute the judges.
On the anniversary of January 13, 1991, my country is currently looking to neighboring Belarus and wishes the fighters there for freedom and justice confidence in victory. Our people appreciate the value of this struggle. For this reason the Lithuanian parliament awarded the annual freedom prize to the democratic opposition in Belarus this year.
–
