Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Petrishenko will represent Minsk at a ceremony to be held in Vilnius on Friday in tribute to the participants of the 1863-1864 uprising, the Foreign Ministry of Belarus has announced.
The ceremony follows a recent discovery of the remains of the anti-Tsarist rebellion leaders, known in Poland as the January Uprising, which will be given a state funeral.
The ceremony will be attended, among others, by the Lithuanian and Polish presidents, government officials from Latvia and Ukraine.
Read more: Polish president to visit VIlnius for reburial of anti-Tsarist fighters
Twenty-one insurgents were executed at Lukiškės Square in Vilnius in 1863-1864 and were secretly buried.
Their remains were unearthed during the Gediminas Hill reinforcement works in 2017.
Archeologists found the remains of 20 of the 21 executed rebels, including uprising commanders Zygmunt Sierakowski (known in Lithuanian as Zigmantas Sierakauskas) and Konstanty Kalinowski (Konstantinas Kalinauskas).
The remains of the 20 participants of the 1863 Polish-Lithuanian uprising against the Tsarist rule will be reburied in the Old Rasos Cemetery following a Holy Mass at Vilnius Cathedral and a solemn procession.
On the way to the cemetery, the procession will stop at the Gate of Dawn chapel. The uprising participants will be honoured by Lithuanian and Polish honour guards, to the tolls of the bells of nearby churches and with prayers in Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian.
The procession is scheduled to reach the Chapel of the Old Rasos Cemetery at around 3. Presidents Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania and Andrzej Duda of Poland are expected to make speeches.
The names of the rebels will be written in Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian.
