Stanislau Shushkevich invited to Lithuania’s Independence Day

• 9.03.2010, 11:19

The Seimas of Lithuania sent invitation to first head of independent Belarus Stanislau Shushkevich to attend solemn commemoration in Vilnius on March 11.

“I have a direct bearing to the historic events in Lithuania. I was the first deputy chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus in 1990. We have debates in the parliament on how the events in the neighbouring country should be regarded. The Supreme Council sent a delegation to Vilnius that was headed by me.

I was in the besieged parliament. There is my photo on the exhibition stand in the Seimas. I know most the MPs who signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania. We know each other for a long time, we have common approaches and views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the beginning of the WWII. I am proud to be invited to the March 11 celebration by the Seimas of Lithuania,” Stanislau Shushkevich, the former chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus, told in an interview to charter97.org.

Recollecting the events taken place 20 years ago, the politician said: “I will never forget how I was taken to the besieged Seimas through a labyrinth: it was like in films when people are being guarded to concentrated camps. There was an uprising in January, some people were killed... We laid flowers to graves of the killed heroes. Lithuania won its independence by means of human losses.

There three opinions in our delegation. I had a moderate opinion, historian Hrytskevich supported the Lithuanian MPs (as a historian, he understood the situation), MPs war veteran Sharapau thought the Communist Party of Lithuanian was right. But we all agreed that the Lithuanian MPs were right to have signed the Act of Independence. People of Lithuania won the right to be free,” Stanislau Shushkevich said.