Interpellation concerning the reports of «Dziennik Wileński» about a Lithuanian demonstration

of the members of the Sejm from the Belarusian Club and comrades to the Minister of the Interior, concerning the reports, alarming to public opinion, spread by the Polish press in Vilnia about a supposedly planned Lithuanian demonstration near Vilnia during the Whitsun holidays of this year.

The nationalist newspaper "Dziennik Wileński", which appears in Vilnia, carries in nos. 111 and 112 of 17 and 18 May of this year a whole series of very alarming and supposedly verified reports that the Lithuanians are supposedly preparing most energetically to break across the border into Vilnia during the approaching holidays, under the guise of a procession of pilgrims. That newspaper calls on the government to introduce a state of emergency in Kalvaryja and the border zone.

On the other hand, it is an indisputable fact that the peaceful and devout Lithuanian population, which is now under Polish rule, by yearly custom gathers at Whitsun from various parts of the country and goes, singing Lithuanian songs, on a pilgrimage to Kalvaryja.

For this reason the alarms of the Polish nationalist press and its calls for a state of emergency give the broad masses of the Lithuanian population grounds to think that the whole alarm that has been raised aims 1) to prevent the devout procession of Lithuanian pilgrims to Vilnia and Kalvaryja, and 2) to arouse anti-Lithuanian feeling in certain domestic and foreign circles.

On the third hand, on the basis of newspaper reports it has become generally known that the government has given General Rydz-Śmigły some powers of an administrative character over the territory of the Vilnia region.

On the fourth hand, a fresh wave of arrests has thrown a whole mass of political prisoners into jail.

All this causes understandable unrest among the population.

For this reason the undersigned ask the Minister of the Interior:

1) Has the ministry officially verified the above reports given by "Dziennik Wileński"?

2) What does it intend to do in case they turn out to be well founded, and will it bring "Dziennik Wileński" to account, in case they turn out to be false, for deliberately inciting the population?

3) What does it intend to do to secure for the Lithuanian pilgrims, who are Polish citizens, the possibility of holding their devout procession in peace?

4) Have powers really been given to General Rydz-Śmigły? If so, for what purpose and what are they?

Warsaw, 27 May 1924.