Despite criticism and protests, the Seimas on Thursday gave the green light for the establishment of a new collegial governing body, the Council for the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (GRRCL).
The council, which will function alongside the GRRCL director, will consist of 11 members appointed for a five-year term.
Four members will be proposed by the Lithuanian Rectors’ Conference, one will be nominated by the GRRCL, and the rest will be delegated by the Lithuanian Institute of History, the parliament, the president, the government, and the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees.
The parliament rejected a proposal from MP Audronius Ažubalis of the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats to make the council an advisory body.
According to the draft law, the centre is an institution whose main task is to evaluate, through scientific and applied research, totalitarian regimes’ occupations of Lithuania and their crimes against its population.
The proposed reform faced opposition from some GRRCL employees, politicians, deportees, and anti-Soviet resistance participants. About 50 people staged a protest outside the parliament on Thursday morning.
Vytautas Sinica, one of the organisers, says the reform will reduce the centre’s independence and politicise its activities.
If the president signs the bill into law, it will enter into force on October 1.
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