600km relay honours Baltic freedom chain

THOUSANDS OF runners took part in a 600km relay race through the Baltic states yesterday to mark 20 years since some two million people linked hands across the region to demand their independence from the Soviet Union.

The race was part of dozens of events to commemorate the vast human chain that snaked across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1989 in a spectacular peaceful protest that helped galvanise a Baltic independence movement that achieved its main aim two years later.

The chain – which involved some one in four residents of the Baltic states – was formed on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression deal between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that included secret protocols carving up Poland and placing the Baltic states under Kremlin control.

After first being invaded by German forces, the Baltic states were annexed by the Soviet Red Army in 1940, ushering in five decades of repression by Moscow.

“Working together in earlier generations we were able to restore our independence. We proved that we could stand stand up for ourselves,” said Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, whose Latvian counterpart, Valdis Zatlers, was to run in the relay.

“We have survived before and today, despite our economic problems, we will survive in the future too,” said Mr Ilves.

The Baltic states have been badly hit by the economic downturn after enjoying several years of stellar growth fuelled partly by their accession to the European Union and Nato in 2004.

“Because of their courage, August 23rd – once infamous as the anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – now stands as a landmark in the struggle for self-determination,” US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said of those who formed the human chain in 1989.