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Compassion Rising Tour 2025: Vilnius Tibet Support Group

18 August: Vilnius Tibet Support Group

Monday evening at 7pm I had arranged to meet Robertas and his friends from the Vilnius Tibet support group. He could not have chosen a more symbolic meeting place: Tibet Square in the heart of the old town. This square is in the territory of the 'Free Republic of Uzupis', an artists' quarter in Vilnius that the Dalai Lama had previously visited and had awarded him honorary citizenship.

Tibet Square was inaugurated in 2010 by Thubten Sandup, a representative of the Dalai Lama. In 2017, after a lot of lobbying by Tibet supporters, the square got a bilingual nameplate inaugurated by the mayor of Vilnius.
 
An exhibition, curated by the Tibet Support Group, on the Dalai Lama's four visits to Lithuania is currently on display in Tibet Square. The exhibition was also previously displayed at the parliament, the former city hall, the university, the cathedral and ended his tour at Tibet Square.
 
Robertas and his companions would also like to set up the exhibition in Kaunas, which also has an - albeit more modest - Tibet Square.
 
Regarding the Dalai Lama's visits:
In 1991, shortly after Lithuanian independence from Russia, he made a speech in parliament. Lithuania did not maintain diplomatic ties with China at the time.

In 2001, he held a lecture in a large arena, met the traveller/artist Jurga Ivanauskaite, who created the design of the mural on the stupa/electricity cabinet and visited Kaunas and several other places.

Mural by Jurga Ivanauskaite

In 2013, he was here to inaugurate the Mandala in Tibet Square. Then a week-long Tibet festival was held.
In 2018, he again visited Tibet Square and planted a Himalayan apple tree there; met dissident priest Julius Sasnauskas, who was dissident under the Soviet regime; and was received at Vilnius University.
 
Another story about Chinese interference that Robertas told me:

In 2019, an incident took place with the Chinese Embassy. Following the protests in Hong Kong against Chinese policies, the Lithuanian solidarity movement had formed a people's chain, modelled on the 600-km-long 'Baltic Way' that the people of the three Baltic states formed in 1989 to commemorate the signing of the secret protocols between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that were fateful to them.

With the knowledge and cooperation of the Chinese embassy, a so-called 'spontaneous Chinese counter-demonstration' was organised in which the Chinese ambassador himself participated. The Lithuanian government did not accept this interference and, in response, opened a Taiwanese representation in Vilnius. Then the Chinese closed the Lithuanian embassy in Beijing and their embassy in Vilnius. That situation remains today.
 
This fine and informative meeting with the Tibet Support Group ended over pot and pint on a terrace next to Tibet Square.
Photos Tibet Support Group
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