Around 1,000 people gathered in Vilnius on Saturday for a protest rally organised by the Lithuanian Family Movement, saying they are defending the constitution.
The Family Movement has previously organised protests opposing same-sex partnership and the government’s Covid-19 vaccination policies. This time, the organisers have not publicised clear demands, but participants were expressing dissatisfaction with the current government and some of its policies, such as the recent law allowing ethnic minority citizens of the country to use original spelling of their names in documents.
“We want the constitution not to be broken, now there are violations everywhere, the Lithuanian language is being humiliated, all kinds of letters Q and W have been adopted, they want to adopt a law on family-non-family unions. The people should pass such a law by referendum, not the Seimas (parliament) gathered from some corners. LGBT is climbing over people’s heads,” Vytautas, a 68-year-old construction worker from Šiauliai district, told BNS.
Defending the constitution
On sunny Saturday, the protesters came to Cathedral Square carrying Lithuanian and regional flags. “Who sleeps in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship”, “Let’s give Lithuania back to the people”, “Less Brussels, more common sense”, “A member of the Seimas without a conscience is a nation without a future”, “When tyranny becomes the law, resistance becomes a duty”, and “Two more years of criminal rule is a catastrophe”, were some of the the banners displayed at the stage and in the crowd.
Algirdas Karneckas, a 42-year-old IT analyst-programmer from Vilnius, said he came to the rally because he wanted to support the people fighting for the constitution.
“I came to express my support for the people who are fighting for the Constitution of Lithuania, for it to be respected, for the law to be respected. When we see the degradation of the government and the rampant corruption, it is just very sad for the country,” Karneckas told BNS.
Edita, 59, an accountant from Šiauliai, said that she has supported the initiatives of the Family Movement since the beginning in 2021.
“We have supported this idea from the very beginning, from [the rally in] Vingio Park, when the march took place, you know all the ideas and all the conflicts,” the woman told BNS.
Lina, a nurse from Druskininkai, said she was attending the rally to defend the constitution and the law.
“Anyone familiar with the constitution can tell that many points are being broken,” said 55-year-old Lina.
Raimondas Grinevičius, head of the Lithuanian Family Union NGO, told BNS before the rally that “the constitution has been turned into a worthless piece of paper”.
“We would like to point out that the articles of the constitution are meaningless for the members of the Seimas and the current government, the constitution has been turned into worthless piece of paper. Take any field – medicine, education, human rights,” said Grinevičius.
Asked whether violent clashes would be avoided at Saturday's rally, he said that “nobody is insured against that”.
“We are coordinating with the police, we have volunteers on our side who will also walk around and watch over,” said the head of the association.
Permit for 15,000 people
Vilnius authorities have given permission for an event of up to 15,000 people. Police presence has been stepped up and the buildings of the parliament and the prime minister’s office have been fenced off.
The website of the Lithuanian Family Movement states that the participants of the rally will speak out against the Civil Union Law being debated in the parliament and the government’s policy in the face of a sharp increase in energy prices.
Jonas Šimėnas, a politician who spoke from the stage, compared the rally to the movement for Lithuanian independence 30 years ago.
“The world has changed at a tremendous pace in the last 30 years, is it possible to find a link between the current situation and the ideas that motivated the action during the Revival [independence movement]? The fact that we are gathered today to defend eternal values is what united us then and still unites us now,” said Šimėnas.
“Unfortunately, we also have something that nobody thought about 30 years ago. Back then, no one thought that we would have to defend traditional values, the family, even though Article 38 of the constitution says that the family is the foundation of society and the state, that the state protects and cherishes the family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood, that marriage is a free contract between a man and a woman, period,” said the politician.
He also regretted that “the upholders and supporters of traditional values are being marginalised by labels such as Kremlin-supporters, tramps, or vatniks”, referring to a derogatory term used loosely to describe local supporters of Russia.
“If we had to defend Lithuania’s freedom again, those vatniks would be the first ones to do it, because you would be afraid of getting your garment of splendour dirty,” Šimėnas said.
Valdas Tutkus, the candidate of the Party of Regions of Lithuania for the mayor of Vilnius and former armed forces commander, said that he was both happy to see the people gathered and sad that “we have to remind ourselves that the sovereign of the state is the people”.
“We are the sovereign, not the ministers, parliamentarians or anyone else who imagines themselves to be so,” Tutkus said from the stage.
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