50,000 demand release of priests

MORE THAN 50,000 Lithuanians petitioned Soviet leaders to release two jailed Lithuanian priests, according to a Lithuanian Information Centre report.
The two priests, Fr Alfonsas Svarinksas and Fr Sigitas Tamkevicius. were arrested last summer for allegedly anticonstitutional activities.
Fr Svarinksas was sentenced to seven years in a strict-regime camp and three years of exile. Fr Tamkevicius is still awaiting trial.
Both priests are members of the Catholic Committee for the Defence of Believers' Rights, founded in 1978 by five Lithuanian priests to attain rights for believers in Lithuania, a once independent country that has been part of the Soviet Union since World War Two.
Following the priests' arrests, the committee came under "severe government attack," according to the Lithuanian Information Centre, based in Brooklyn.
The petition states that the Lithuanian press, in describing Fr Svarinksas' trial, "did not indicate a single crime against the state or its system'