A Vilnius court has sentenced a Lithuanian woman to one and a half years of restricted freedom for publicly denying Soviet crimes, in a case centring on a Facebook post about one of the most notorious atrocities of the Soviet crackdown on Lithuanian independence.
Erika Svenčionienė was convicted over a post she published in July 2024 to mark the anniversary of the Medininkai massacre – an event in which Soviet special forces killed seven Lithuanian border guards and left an eighth with severe brain damage, in the early hours of July 31, 1991.
The killings took place at a border checkpoint near the town of Medininkai, close to the Belarusian border, at a time when Lithuania had declared independence from the Soviet Union but Soviet forces were still present on Lithuanian territory. The massacre is regarded in Lithuania as one of the gravest crimes of the Soviet occupation period.
The Vilnius Regional Court on Wednesday amended an earlier ruling by a lower court, which in February had convicted Svenčionienė but imposed only a 3,750-euro fine – a penalty the prosecution considered too lenient. The appellate court agreed, sentencing her instead to 18 months of restricted freedom, though it stopped short of the intensive supervision sought by the prosecution.
"The convict acted with direct intent. She published a post on a social network that grossly belittled the fact of aggression against the Republic of Lithuania, as recognised by court decisions and legal acts, and the serious crimes committed during it," said the presiding judge Julita Dabulskytė-Raizgienė, adding that the gravity of the offence warranted a tougher response than a fine.
Svenčionienė was also ordered to work or to register with the Employment Service throughout the duration of her sentence, and to remove the Facebook post in question.
In her defence, Svenčionienė told the court that her post drew on two sources: a book by author Giedrė Gorienė and a speech delivered by Vytautas Landsbergis, the first leader of independent Lithuania, at a Medininkai anniversary commemoration.
However, the book's author testified that her publication contains no information suggesting the killings were carried out by Lithuanians rather than Soviet forces. The court also examined the Landsbergis speech and found it contained no claims implicating Lithuanian special services or officials in the massacre.
The court rejected an appeal filed by Svenčionienė's lawyer and left the remainder of the lower court's verdict unchanged. The prosecution had additionally sought a contribution of 1,000 euros to a victims' fund, though the court did not grant that element of the appeal.
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