Bonfires and gatherings remember bloody Baltic events of 1991
Bonfires were lit and public gatherings held in the Latvian capital Riga January 20th to commemorate Soviet attempts at repressing independence movements in Latvia and Lithuania in 1991 that saw 20 people killed by Soviet forces in both countries.
The annual commemoration of the so-called “Days of the Barricades” recalls the building of improvised barricades of heavy farm equipment, trucks and building materials to seal off important buildings like Latvian Radio and the current Latvian parliament building, then the first freely-elected Latvian Supreme Council under the Soviets. The barricades mainly in Riga’s Old Town went up after a call by the pro-independence Latvian Popular Front following the killing of 14 people by Soviet soldiers in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius early on January 13, 1991.
Latvian Prime Minister Krišjanis Kariņš, Defense Minister Artis Pabriks and Ināra Mūrniece, the chairperson of the Latvian Parliament or Saeima were among official who took torches from an honor guard of junior members of the Latvian Home Guard to light a symbolic bonfire in Riga’s central Dom Square to mark the day when five people were killed in Riga on January 20 29 years ago.
Four people, two Soviet policemen loyal to the independence movement, Andris Slapiņš, a well know ethnographic…
