An estimated 4,000 people gathered on the evening of November 14 during the Lithuanian capital’s first snowfall to protest against Remigijus Žemaitaitis, who was inaugurated as MP inside the parliament earlier that evening.

Conservative Party and Liberal Union MPs left the chamber when Žemaitaitis took an oath to uphold the Lithuanian constitution.

Žemaitaitis catapulted to infamy in the early spring of 2023 by making anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements on his facebook page. His party’s parliamentary faction and then the party as a whole expelled him. Lithuania’s Constitutional Court found he had violated oath of office by calling for the murder of Jews.

He used the notoriety to form his own political party called Nemuno Aušra, or Dawn of the Nieman River, which placed third in recent elections to parliament, placing close to the Conservative Party in second place.

Initially pledging not to include Nemuno Aušra in any future coalition, the Social Democratic Party who took first place in elections reneged on that promise. Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda said he wouldn’t approve any Nemuno Aušra MPs as ministers in a coalition government. Žemaitaitis said he would fill three ministerial posts promised him by the social democrats with non-party members.

A sister protest was held in Kaunas across the street from the municipality’s Christmas tree display currently being set up. An estimated 500 people attended that protest. There was also a small protest in Tauragė.

More information available here.

by Ingrida Steniulienė, November 13, ELTA

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said statements by Nemuno Aušra party leader Remigijus Žemaitaitis are insulting and offensive to her as a person.

“He called for killing Jews, that’s how it seemed to me,” Kukliansky said Wednesday during questioning at a hearing of the Vilnius District Court.

She was testifying in a case against Žemaitaitis for sowing hatred against Jews and for supporting, denying or belittling international crimes.

“He is inciting [hatred] against certain groups of people without knowing history. I can’t understand this in any other way,” she told the court. Kukliansky is an attorney by profession.

Photo: Josvydas Elinskas/ELTA

by Ingrida Steniulienė, November 13, 2024, ELTA

Prosecutor Justas Laucius has asked a Lithuanian court to empower prosecutor general Nida Grunskienė to make a request to the Lithuanian parliament for removing parliamentary legal immunity for Remigijus Žemaitaitis, the leader of the party Nemuno Aušra who faces trial for sowing ethnic discord with anti-Semitic statements he made on social media and to the press.

The prosecutor asked the Vilnius District Court Wednesday to take into account Žemaitaitis is to give his oath of office as a member of parliament Thursday and will gain legal immunity granted to all MPs in Lithuania.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended the hearing and gave testimony. She spoke with reporters after the hearing and noted Jews do not now feel safe in Lithuania. She refuted claims Žemaitaitis made earlier about his own statements, including his posting without preamble of an anti-Semitic Lithuanian song calling on children to beat Jews to death with sticks which he later claimed was a citation of Lithuanian folklore.

by Liova Kaplan

Being a musician, a pianist and a piano teacher, I also like singing and songs. Different songs–happy and sad, French and German, Yiddish and Russian, classic and folk songs, etc.

But one children’s song, a Lithuanian folk song which unfortunately I have heard many times growing up in Lithuania makes me very angry and sad. Many generations of Lithuanians have been raised hearing and often singing this folk song.

A Jew is climbing a ladder
Suddenly he is falling
Children! Take a wooden stick
And kill the Jew!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, uniting 32 domestic and international organizations, urges president of the Republic of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, to defend the principles embedded in the Lithuanian constitution and to prevent the anti-Semitic forces represented by the political party Nemuno Aušra from becoming part of the new ruling coalition and government.

Nemuno Aušra was founded and is led by Remigijus Žemaitaitis, who was deemed by the Constitutional Court to have breached his parliamentary oath and grossly violated the constitution through anti-Semitic statements and incitement of ethnic hatred. Due to a loophole in the law, he evaded accountability and continues to cynically deny the decision of the highest judicial authority, defaming the judges who made this ruling, and thereby undermining Lithuania’s status as a state under the rule of law on the international stage.