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| Australian Lithuanian demonstrator in Canberra |
On August 3, 1974,
with no forewarning, it was announced that the Government had recognized, de
jure, the annexation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union. It was soon
revealed that it was Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam Whitlam’s own decision,
taken without cabinet or caucus debate, to give legitimacy to the forced
annexations by the Soviet Union of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, carried out
in 1940 by a mixture of military force, terror and political fraud under the
secret terms of the Nazi Soviet Pact of August, 1939.
Balts in Australia were horrified and began to campaign
against the decision. Recorded in a
Lithuanian newspaper in Boston was a poem coined by an Australian Lithuanian.
I’m glad I’m a Lithuanian,
I’m happy I am free
I wish I was a big dog,
And Whitlam was a tree.
I’m happy I am free
I wish I was a big dog,
And Whitlam was a tree.
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