Education and Science, History, Lithuania

Asta Skaisgiryte Liauskiene and Jurate Statkute de Rosales. Vilnius, 14.06.2011. Photo: urm.lt

Statkute de Rosales shared her ideas about the dawn of the Baltic culture, origins and patterns in the field of linguistics. On June 15 Statkute de Rosales will be awarded an honorary doctorate (honoris causa) at the Vilnius Pedagogical University.

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

Statkute 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 (Tautininkø sàjunga). On 6 July 1940, 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 Skucas 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, Statkute 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 Pais". For a long time she also cooperated with the American Lithuanian weekly "Soil" (Dirva), which is published in Cleveland, the U.S.A. Statkute 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.

Statkute de Rosales is visiting Lithuania until June 27.