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On 14 June at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė met with Venezuelan scholar of the Lithuanian background, journalist and researcher of the historic past of the Baltic tribes Jūratė Statkutė de Rosales.

During the meeting, Vice-Minister A.Skaisgirytė Liauškienė took interest in Venezuela’s political situation and in important issues of the Lithuanian Community in Venezuela. J.Statkutė de Rosales shared her ideas about the dawn of the Baltic culture, origins and patterns in the field of linguistics.

On 15 June J.Statkutė de Rosales will be awarded an honorary doctorate (honoris causa) at the Vilnius Pedagogical University.

On 16 June at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, J.Statkutė de Rosales will present her new book “The European roots and we, Lithuanians”.

J.Statkutė de Rosales was born in 1929 in Kaunas. Her father, Jonas Statkus, was head of the security service of Lithuania from 1931 to 1934, and from 1939 to 1940 he was Secretary General of the Lithuanian National Union (Tautininkų sąjunga). On 6 July 1940, J.Statkus together with Augustinas Povilaitis, whom many citizens of Lithuania know as the first victim of the terror of the occupants and the last head of the independent Lithuanian security service of the time Gen. Kazys Skučas were arrested by the Soviet occupational authorities and sent to prison in Russia. The time of death and their burial location are not known yet.

Since 1983, J.Statkutė de Rosales has been the editor-in-chief of the popular Venezuela Opposition’s political, economic and cultural weekly magazine “Zeta” and has a column in the daily newspaper “El Nuevo País”. For a long time she also cooperated with the American Lithuanian weekly “Soil” (Dirva), which is published in Cleveland, the U.S.A.

J.Statkutė de Rosales is awarded the Cross of the Knight of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the highest orders of Venezuela and the city of Caracas. In 1996, she was nominated Personality of the Year by the South American journalists’ organization - the Ibero-American Journalists Association.

J.Statkutė de Rosales is visiting Lithuania until 27 June.