Vilnius City Municipality has given permission for up to 5,000 people to protest on Thursday against the inclusion of Nemunas Dawn in the ruling coalition. The party’s leader, Remigijus Žemaitaitis, previously left the parliament over anti-Semitism allegations.
The protest will be held at Nepriklausomybės Square in the Lithuanian capital on Thursday, the day of the first sitting of the new Seimas.
"We are gathering to show that there are people who believe that there must be red lines and criteria of decency in politics, one of them is zero tolerance of anti-Semitism,” the invitation to the rally on Facebook reads.
The demonstration is being organised by lawyer and writer Justinas Žilinskas, theatre critic Sigita Ivaškaitė, musician Martynas Meškerys and lawyer Algimantas Čepas.
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Žemaitaitis said that the protest was an attempt to stage a coup. In response, he invited people to protest in front of the house of Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first post-independence president and former leader of the Conservative party.
The conservatives led the outgoing three-party coalition, with Gabrielius Landsbergis, the grandson of Vytautas Landsbergis, as the foreign minister.
Following the protest invitation by Žemaitaitis, the police opened on Monday a pre-trial investigation into incitement of hatred. The politician then backtracked, saying his invitation was a joke.
The courts are currently examining a criminal case in which Žemaitaitis is accused of inciting hatred against Jewish people.
Previously, the country’s Constitutional Court found Žemaitaitis guilty of breaking his oath of office and of a serious violation of the Constitution for his public statements about Jews and Israel.
Žemaitaitis rejects anti-Semitism accusations, saying he had only criticised Israel.
