Lithuanian Activists Protest U.S. Reaction to Crackdown

Lithuanian activists, incensed over President Bush’s reaction to a Soviet crackdown on the Baltic republic, lined the steps of Los Angeles’ City Hall on Monday and called for a sterner, more decisive condemnation of the Red Army’s assault on civilians in their homeland.

Protesters railed at the Bush Administration for warning Soviet leaders to curb military actions such as the seizure of Lithuania’s radio and television center on Sunday.

Reports of deaths in the Soviet crackdown have been overshadowed, the protesters said, by news of American troops bracing for combat in the Persian Gulf, and the Administration’s foreign policy concerns have largely been focused on the prospect of war.

A member of Lithuania’s parliament, in Los Angeles visiting immigrant associations and churches, told the City Hall crowd of more than 200 that the crackdown did not come without warning.

“It was entirely predictable,” said Stasys Kasauskas, a foreign affairs committee member of Lithuania’s parliament. “I believe firmly that Gorbachev waited until this time to act in Lithuania, when the world’s focus was in another arena,” he said. He added that Lithuanian President Vytautahas Landsbergis visited the White House last year to warn of escalating Soviet aggression.

The republic of almost 5 million still was not prepared for the armed seizure that was to come, said Birute Vilersis, a protest organizer and vice president of the Baltic American Freedom League, one of the groups representing Lithuanians in Southern California, who number more than 50,000.

“Although we were prepared and waiting for something,” Vilersis said, “we were not prepared for the severity and brutality of the attack.”