VILNIUS - The "onion campaign" organized outside the Lithuanian parliament building by the Front Party grew into an unsanctioned rally and has ended within 1.5 hours.
Led by the Front Party leader Algirdas Paleckis, about 50 participants of the campaign marched down the central Vilnius avenue hauling a wheelbarrow with golden-sprayed onions. Another few hundred people gathered outside the parliament building.
The police allowed merely a few protest action participants - Paleckis and Vilnius City Council member Audrius Butkevicius - into the parliament, which had been surrounded by a metal protective fence since the morning.
Held back 75 meters from the parliament, the crowd chanted: "Shame!" but acted in a peaceful manner.
Police officers escorted a few young men wearing masks out of the crowd. putting them in police cars. Under the Lithuanian law on public protest actions, participants are not allowed to conceal their faces.
The Feb. 3 protest rally was initially organized by the non-parliamentary Front Party and the Small Enterprise and Trade Association.
However, the association decided to give up the plans after the government satisfied its main demands. The Front Party did not receive a permit for the rally from the Vilnius municipality.
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