The 30the anniversary of the defence of independence of Lithuania was marked under unusual circumstances. For the first time ever after 1991, the Seimas did not hold a traditional solemn commemoration. Instead, it called on the people of Lithuania to pay tribute to the defenders of freedom by lighting candles in their homes and to view the recorded broadcast of the commemoration of the Day of the Defenders of Freedom and the Freedom Prize award ceremony.
Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania; Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, Speaker of the Seimas; Vytautas Landsbergis, President of the Supreme Council-Reconstituent Seimas; teacher Robertas Vaitkus, Chairman of the Bičiulystė Association of Relatives of these who were killed on 13 January 1991 and son of the defender of freedom, Vytautas Vaitkus, killed on 13 January 1991 and posthumously awarded with the 1st Class Order of the Cross of Vytis; Dalia Steiblienė medical doctor, former anaesthetist and intensivist at the then 1st Clinical Hospital in Vilnius (currently St. Jacob Hospital), who worked on the night of 13 January; and Father Julius Sasnauskas, Franciscan monk and Soviet dissident, delivered speeches in the Hall of the Act of 11 March of the Seimas.
Paulė Kuzmickienė, Chair of the Freedom Prize Commission, and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the democratic Belarus, made concluding speeches at the end of the commemoration. The Speaker of the Seimas handed the Freedom Prize 2020 dedicated to the democratic opposition of Belarus over to Ms Tsikhanouskaya.
