Lithuania Answered Eight Questions. It Ignored the Four That Matter. |
I am publishing this because I have now spent the better part of a decade dealing with Lithuania on Holocaust memory, historical accountability, and the ongoing prosecution of those who challenge state-sanctioned myth. After that decade, I have complete confidence that private communication with Lithuanian officials is pointless. They are skilled at the appearance of engagement. What they will not do is answer a direct question that threatens the narrative. So the record belongs in public, where it can be read for what it is.
On March 17, 2026, I sent a formal letter to Consul General Sandra Brikaitė of the Consulate General of Lithuania in Los Angeles. The letter asked twelve specific questions about the criminal prosecution of Artur Fridman — a Jewish Lithuanian citizen charged for a Facebook post discussing Holocaust-era history — and about the institutional architecture that made that prosecution possible. The letter is available here. My earlier article explaining why I sent it, and why the case matters beyond Fridman himself, is here.
On April 13, 2026, Consul General Brikaitė replied. Her letter is available here.
She answered three questions in substance. They were the process questions: the statutory charges, the applicable penalties, and the procedural posture of the case. Competent, lawyerly, appropriate to a consular response designed to appear responsive. I expected that much.
She gave five more questions a different treatment. Asked who Fridman’s defense counsel is, what level of defense he is receiving, whether he has been afforded full access to counsel at every stage, whether his assigned counsel is qualified in the relevant areas of law, and whether he has been given full access to the evidence against him, she responded with general statements about Lithuanian law and EU legal standards. She did not name his counsel. She did not describe the defense being mounted. She did not confirm full evidentiary access. She described the legal framework that surrounds the case rather than the conduct of the case itself. That is not a non-answer. It is something subtler: the form of an answer arranged around the absence of one.
The remaining four questions she did not answer at all. These are the ones that matter most.
Question one:........