Soviet demands for the immediate formation of a "friendly" government and Soviet military occupation marked the end of a sovereign democratic Lithuania and the beginning of its tragic enslavement by the Communist tyrants. June 15 and 16. 1941. are equally sad anniversaries for the Lithuanian people. for on those days thousands of the brave people of that country were forcibly deprived of their liberty and exiled to the wastelands of Siberia. On the night of June 1415 alone some 30.000 members of the Lithuanian intelligentsia were deported under inhuman conditions to slave labor camps. and new waves of mass deportations and arrests followed. In 194849 approximately 10 percent of Lithuanias population was driven to Siberia because of the resistance of Lithuanian farmers to the forcible collectivization of land which had belonged to them and which they had farmed for centuries. Thus. in recalling the tragic fate of those Lithuanians who were driven from their homeland by the Soviet Communists. let us pledge ourselves courageously to oppose the aggression and tyranny of which Lithuania was. and still is. victim and stanchly to defend the right of all peoples to national independence and individual freedom.
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deported deportations