The award ceremony was held in parliament on the Day of the Defenders of Freedom, 13 January 2025. Speaker of the Seimas of Lithuania Saulius Skvernelis presented the award.
The Freedom Prize is bestowed for contribution to defending human rights, advancing democracy, promoting transnational cooperation and fighting for the self-determination and sovereignty of Eastern and Central European nations.
Sasnauskas was one of the youngest participants of Lithuania’s unarmed anti-Soviet resistance and an active member of the underground national political organisation the Lithuanian Liberty League (LLL).
In 1979, in Tartu, Sasnauskas together with Antanas Terleckas drafted a letter to the free world, a memorandum of 45 Baltic citizens urging condemnation of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols and calling to restore the independence of the Baltic States.
He was arrested by the KGB on 11 December 1979, sentenced and deported to Tomsk Oblast, western Siberia, in 1981. He was released in 1986, returned to Lithuania and rejoined the underground activities.
On 4 July 1987, members of the Lithuanian Liberty League decided to hold a rally to mark the 48th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1987, which was the first such unsanctioned event and the first public anti-Soviet demonstration.
