LITUANUS
LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
 
Volume 21, No.1 - Spring 1975
Editors of this issue: Antanas Klimas, Thomas Remeikis, Bronius Vaskelis
Copyright © 1975 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.
Lituanus

The Violations of Human Rights in Soviet Occupied Lithuania: A Report for 1974. Glenside, PA: Lithuanian American Community, Inc. (708 Custis Road, Glenside, PA 19038), 1975, 112 p.
The Violations of Human Rights in Soviet Occupied Lithuania: A Report for 1973. Glendale, PA: Lithuanian American Community, Inc. (708 Custis Road, Glenside, PA 19038), 1974, 112 p.

Both volumes of this report series contain valuable documentary evidence of the continued violations of human rights in Soviet occupied Lithuania.*

The report for 1973 contains four chapters: (1) The Suppression of Dissent; (2) The Suppression of Creative Freedom and the Cultivation of Cultural Heritage; (3) Violations of Freedom of Religion and Conscience; and (4) The Denial of National Self-Determination.

The 1973 report surveys the state of human rights in Lithuania. The Report presents available documentary evidence that in the area of national and political rights an intensified police and ideological suppression can be seen in Lithuania which is part of the Kremlin's attempt to strangle national, democratic, and religious protest in the entire state. A Number of instances of political persecution and numerous measures to impose ideological controls over the population are noted. Instances of violations of religious freedom are also documented, using the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania (the LKB Kronika) as a source. In general the Report is an excellent summary of the situation during 1973.

The 1974 report, which was just published in February, 1975, contains three excellent chapters: (1) The Denial of the Eight to Self-Determination; (2) Violations of Freedom of Religion and Conscience; and (3) The Suppression of Dissent.

The 1974 report is the fourth annual report on the struggle of the Lithuanian people for basic national, religious and democratic rights. The Report includes the principal documents on this struggle which have been received in the West. Obviously, they represent only a small cross-section of the struggle for freedom, for the closed Soviet society does not permit a free circulation of ideas and people. Nevertheless, this authentic voice of the Lithuanian people is a significant one intended to call the attention of world public opinion, the UN Commission on Human Rights, world religious organizations, and of every human being who believes in the propositions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, to the gross violations of human rights, perpetrated by the Soviet regime upon the Lithuanian nation. The documents presented need no further explanations. A case in point is the KGB effort to liquidate the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. The Report cites arrest records and extracts of search reports by the KGB in Lithuania. Voluminous evidence is presented showing that even simple prayer books are being confiscated by the KGB.

Both reports should be examined, read and evaluated by all individuals who deal with the area of Soviet Studies.

 

* Copies of these reports are available from the Lithuanian American Community, 708 Custis Road, Glenside, PA 19038.