Former European Parliament member and Schiller Institute friend Tatjana Zdanoka calls on international public opinion to pay attention to the repression and persecution of free speech in Lithuania.
Ms. Zdanoka mentions the case of Algirdas Paleckis, who is serving a sentence for having publicly recalled that the chair of the National Security and Defence Committee of the Parliament has been a member of a nazi party. Laurynas Kasciunas was indeed head of the youth organization of the National Democratic Party of Lithuania, a far-right organization, Nevertheless, by a court decision on Kasciunas’ appeal, Paleckis was sentenced to no less than a prison term. In another decision, he was sentenced for “belittling the role of Lithuania’s post-Second World War guerilla movement against the Soviet authorities.” In total, in 2025, 1 year and 10 months were added to the six years custodial sentence of 2023 for “intending to spy for Russia.” The “spying” consisted of collecting information on the events of January 1991 in Vilnius.
“The case of Paleckis alone,” Zdanoka wrote, “shows that in the Baltic states, debates about history have now moved to courtrooms. There are tens of other “politically motivated” persecutions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”
However, something seems to move, if it is true, as reported by the portal Delfi, that the Honorary Chairman of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP), Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, has called Algirdas Paleckis a “political prisoner.”
Ms. Zdanoka recalls that the State Security of Latvia has indicted her of crimes consisting of “consolidation and self-organization of the community of Russian-speakers in Latvia” and “telling the people in Russia about the situation of their compatriots living in Latvia.” Eventually, the European Parliament voted a resolution calling her an alleged “agent of Russian intelligence.” Ms. Zdanoka is defending herself in a Belgian court, being a resident of Brussels.
