Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 28, 1990                   TAG: 9004280129
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

SUICIDE BLAZE MARKS PROTEST FOR LITHUANINAS

In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, Russian truckers lay down in front of their rigs and blocked rush-hour traffic to protest the Baltic republic's declaration of independence on March 11.

The suicide victim, Stanislovas Jamaitis, 52, died Thursday of burns suffered when he doused his clothes with gasoline and set himself ablaze in front of the Bolshoi Theater in central Moscow.

Jamaitis, a Lithuanian, left suicide notes to his wife, Stasala, and to Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis. The Lithuanian Supreme Council, or Parliament, released the texts Friday. Spokeswoman Rita Radzevicius translated them from Lithuanian to Russian and read them over the telephone.

The official Soviet news agency Tass also reported the existence of the note but did not mention any political motive. Tass said the letter "spoke of an impossible family life and a desire to commit suicide."

The version released by Lithuanian authorities apologized for "something bad" in his marriage, but stressed political motives.

"I went to Moscow to set myself on fire in Red Square," he said. The Bolshoi is a few blocks from Red Square, where security is heavier.

"The occupiers have cut off energy supplies and people are being thrown out of work," wrote Jamaitis, who officials say was recently laid off.

"I have lived my whole life in occupied Lithuania," wrote Jamaitis, who was born two years before the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Lithuania and its sister republics of Latvia and Estonia during World War II.

He was killing himself, he said, to "let Gorbachev know that Lithuanians will not live in a Lithuania that is not independent," said the note read by Radzevicius.

The suicide recalled the 1971 self-immolation of a Lithuanian student, Romas Kalanta, in the western Lithuanian city of Kaunas. That act was a symbol of Lithuanian resistance in the 1970s and 1980s, activists say.

The truck blockade in Vilnius marked a new level of protest by non-Lithuanians in the republic. Demonstrators lay down in front of their trucks in the center of Vilnius to protest "adventurist decisions" of the Lithuanian Parliament, Tass said.

Supporters of the Lithuanian popular front Sajudis dragged the trucks from the streets with tractors, Tass said. It also reported that local authorities released truckers arrested in the protest to keep the peace.