"Today we remember the victims of totalitarian regimes and honour those who fought against tyranny and oppression. We also commemorate the most vivid expression of the Baltic nations’ desire for freedom. On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood hand in hand in the Baltic Way from Vilnius through Riga to Tallinn in order to demand the restoration of their independence, which had been robbed by the Soviet regime. Our peaceful aspiration for freedom was stronger than Soviet might, because justice was on our side," reads a press release issued by the three PMs on Friday.
In the communiqué, Lithuania's Algirdas Butkevičius, Latvia's Valdis Dombrovskis and Estonia's Andrus Ansip note that the ideologies of Communism and Nazism claimed millions of lives, and every family in the Baltic states was affected “by the violence of these malicious regimes."
On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its secret protocols to unlawfully dividing Europe into zones of influence, which eventually led to occupation of the three Baltic nations.
To mark the event, two millions of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians held hands to form a human chain in the Baltic Way stretching some 600km from Vilnius to Tallinn on August 23, 1989.
