In order to ensure fair and equal representation for the Baltic’s at the next upcoming European Council meeting at which will be decided the EU agricultural budget for 2014 to 2020, an event is being planned by farmers in the Baltic States to light some 400 fires along the access roads to Via Baltica road (E-67). The event is being called the Bonfire Baltic Way and will symbolise the unity of the Baltic States farming community. Starting at 16:30 on 5th February a meeting will be held at Dome Square,Riga of farmers and officials where speeches and musical performances will be given before the fires are lit at 17:00, and kept alight until 18:00. Similar simultaneous meetings are to be held in Salacgrīva, Saulkrasti, Ķekava, Iecava, Bauska, and on the border points with Estonia and Lithuania.
The event is reminiscing of the first Baltic Way, also known as the Baltic Chain, an extraordinary show of solidarity when some two million ordinary people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania linked hands to form a human chain from Tallinn to Vilnius in 1989 covering over 600 kilometres. This peaceful protest was to mark the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was created between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and led to occupation of the Baltic States in 1940. This visually stunning event was designed to draw the world’s eyes to the desire for independence from the Soviet Union for each of the Baltic countries and the intense solidarity held among the these three nations.
