Opening speech on behalf of the President of the Republic of Lithuania

29 BSPCYEARSBaltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceOPENINGOpening speech on behalf of thePresident of the Republic of LithuaniaOn behalf of H. E. Mr. Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania,Mr. Sigitas Mitkus, Adviser to the President on Foreign Policy IssuesSpeech of Mr Sigitas Mitkus,On Behalf of H. E. Mr Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania,at the Digital 29th BSPC on 24 August 2020Mr Mitkus said it was a great honour and privilege for him to read the opening speech of HisExcellency, Mr Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania.In the president’s name, he stated that it was a great privilege to open the Baltic Sea ParliamentaryConference at this challenging but highly important time for the Baltic Sea region as a whole.On 1 July, Lithuania had taken over the annual rotating presidency of the Council of the BalticSea States from Denmark. In order to meet regional challenges, they had decided to pursue theGreen Economy, greater visibility of the region, growth and jobs, people-to-people contacts,environmental issues of the Baltic Sea and the vision of the Baltic Sea until 2030.But it was very difficult to talk about the agenda of the nation’s presidency on this day whileall of them had been watching with great concern the developments in Belarus following thepresidential election on 9 August. They had seen brutal repression by the Belarusian authoritiesagainst peaceful demonstrators and journalists. They had seen testimonies of their releaseddetainees and mass violations of human rights. Thousands had been detained and imprisoned,hundreds tortured, several killed. It mobilised the Belarusian people to aspire to freedom andchange in their country. Then thousands and hundreds of thousands of people had spilled intothe streets across the country. Their freedom, their free and democratic will should not meetsilence. Sanctions against those responsible for violence, repression and falsification of electionresults must be introduced. All those responsible for torture and brutality must be prosecuted. Allcountries should establish independence and sovereignty from others, fair and free elections withthe presence of international observers, the right of people to protest peacefully, the right of peoplenot to be beaten, tortured and imprisoned.These are the values that should be defended. The people of the Baltic States – Lithuanians,Latvians, Estonians – remembered perfectly well that thirty years ago, they had been lookingforward to every word or action of support from the free world. The day before the conference,more than fifty thousand people had joined a human chain stretching from the Lithuanian capitalVilnius to the border with Belarus, stressing their support for the Belarusian people. The people ofBelarus had made it clear that the popular vote went to its national leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.Belarus was now on its way to freedom, just as the Baltic countries had been thirty years earlier, -freedom from fear, lies and manipulation.Finally, on the vision of the Baltic Sea region, the Lithuanian presidency of the Council of theBaltic Sea States had already offered an assessment of the implementation of the vision for 2020which had been adopted ten years before. Said assessment was planned to be followed by a newdeclaration of a vision for the Baltic Sea region until 2030.Speaking for the president, Mr Mitkus said that he would like to believe in a free and democraticBelarus.