Protesters urge government to resist pressure over Sports Palace

About 100 people gathered in Vilnius on Monday to protest over the future of the city’s Concert and Sports Palace, urging the government not to give in to pressure, LRT reported, citing BNS.

The rally, organised by the Tautos Forum, took place in Vinco Kudirka Square. Participants held signs asking who owns the palace and who is deciding its fate, as well as calling for the right to manage the building and the state square.

The event opened with greetings to neighbouring Estonia and Ukraine on Independence Day. Participants also commemorated the Baltic Way by joining hands and singing Lithuania’s national anthem.

Vytautas Radžvilas, one of the rally’s organisers, said that the European Jewish cemetery maintenance organisation and other authoritative institutions had indicated there were no obstacles to reconstructing the palace on the site of a cemetery that disappeared about 150 years ago.

“Today Lithuania is facing a situation in which a couple of people come to the government, representing who knows whom and authorised by who knows whom, and say: ‘We forbid you to do this.’ Can a sovereign state and its government give in to actions that can only be called pressure and blackmail?” Radžvilas told BNS.

He said the rally was intended to encourage government representatives to make decisions in Vilnius that reflected the state’s dignity and long-term security interests.

“The government must see that not everyone is asleep, that there are Lithuanian citizens who understand the importance of the Sports Palace and do not intend to passively watch it deteriorate until all that remains is to say: ‘They have to be demolished.’ We do not want to allow that,” Radžvilas said.

A resolution prepared by the Tautos Forum demands that the government take three steps by September 1: approve and publicly announce a financing method for the palace’s reconstruction, select a contractor and allocate funding for preparatory work.

In May, the Seimas began considering a resolution proposing that the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace be adapted into a congress centre while also commemorating the former Jewish cemetery on the site and the Sąjūdis movement.

Part of the Jewish community opposes the congress centre and wants the building converted into a memorial to Lithuanian Jewish history. After public opinion split over the building’s future, the Seimas Culture Committee decided to postpone a decision until autumn.

The committee is expected to establish a working group to prepare a revised plan for the functions of the future congress centre. The Culture Ministry is also expected to seek national significance protected cultural heritage status for the building. It currently has regional significance status.

Under an earlier plan, the reconstructed building would include conference spaces, a library, a culture and information centre, exhibitions on the national revival and Sąjūdis, and memorial and educational spaces dedicated to Jewish history.