Gitanas Nausėda awarded Raczynsky with the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas.
“This award is a symbol of appreciation and solidarity with Memorial International. We are delighted that the organization, along with Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, has been recognized with one of the most significant awards—the Nobel Peace Prize 2022,” the President spoke.
Gitanas Nausėda stressed that over the past decades Lithuania has not only observed, but also actively brought to public attention Russia’s regime’s violations of human rights and freedoms, repression, propaganda, repressive laws and campaigns of violence against the democratic opposition, civil society, human rights defenders and independent journalists, and made every effort at the United Nations and other international and regional organizations to make the world aware of them.
Lithuania is grateful to Memorial organizations and their collaborators not only for their cooperation in investigating the Stalinist regime’s repression in Lithuania and against Lithuanian citizens, but also for fostering the memory of the victims of imprisonment and deportation of the Lithuanian people, and for preserving the places of their commemoration in Russia, although in many cases Memorial volunteers are put in danger by doing so.
The Memorial human rights organization was founded in 1987, with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina among its founders. After the fall of the USSR, the Memorial became the largest human rights organization in Russia, not only investigating the Soviet crimes but also documenting human rights violations in Russia.
