The Seventy Years Declaration, released on 20 January 2012, was the subject of a 31 January 2012 Žinių radijas (News Radio) station panel discussion including one of the Lithuanian signatories of the declaration, Social Democratic MP Vytenis Andriukaitis, himself a signatory of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence. MP Andriukaitis was attacked by the foreign minister for signing.

MP Andriukaitis’s response won international support, and there is reference in the panel discussion to the support from British human rights champion MP Denis MacShane for all eight Lithuanian parliamentarians who signed the Seventy Years Declaration.

The other participants were rather obviously opposed to MP Andriukaitis (and the Seventy Years Declaration), making it a rather unbalanced panel: the moderator, Audrys Antanaitis; Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (known for short as the “Red-Brown Commission”; it is chaired by Conservative MP Emanuelis Zingeris, the only Jewish signatory of the Prague Declaration); far-right political activist and academic Marius Kundrotas. The original Lithuanian broadcast is available here. What follows is as full as possible an English translation made from the audio.

• The participants:

• AA: Audrys Antanaitis
• MK: Marius Kundrotas
• RR: Ronaldas Račinskas
• VA: Vytenis Andriukaitis

AA: Hello, this is Audrys Antanaitis. Today: about a history that inevitably affects our present. The so-called Wannsee Declaration [= Seventy Years Declaration] again recalls a painful past and its different interpretations. So, can the Holocaust be compared with Communist crimes? It’s said that that offends Jews. But why should Jews be offended by a reminder that the Communists also killed en masse innocent people? And in general, why have we today decided to compete on who suffered more, the victims of the Nazis or the victims of the Communists? Is this really important to the victims themselves and their families? Does talking about one’s suffering really require comparison with the sufferings of other victims?

Is it really important on what basis the mass murder was carried out, or executed? That basis will not bring the person back in any event. Today our guests are Ronaldas Racinskas, executive director of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania; historian, political scientist and member of the board of directors of the Nationalist Union Marius Kundrotas; and signatory to the Act of Restoration of Independence and vice-chairman of the Social Democratic Party Vytenis Andriukaitis. Welcome.

Various: Good day. Good day. Good morning.

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