Established to monitor the implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, better known as Helsinki Accords, it was the first human rights organization in Lithuania.
Its activities diminished after it lost members due to deaths, emigration, or imprisonment, though it was never formally disbanded.
Inspired by the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Lithuanian grouped was founded by five dissidents of different walks of life: Jesuit priest Karolis Garuckas, Jewish "refusenik" Eitanas Finkelšteinas, poet and deportee Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė, twice-imprisoned Catholic dissident Viktoras Petkus, and poet Tomas Venclova.
[2] The formation was formally announced in a press conference to foreign journalists from Reuters and Chicago Tribune on November 27 or December 1, 1976 in the apartment of Yuri Orlov (Natan Sharansky acted as an interpreter to English).
[5] The group did not limit its reports to Lithuania or Lithuanians; for example, it reported on arrests of three Estonians (Mart Nikius, Erik Udam, and Enn Tarto), discrimination of 49 Volga German families living in Radviliškis, and persecution of a Russian Pentecostal living in Vilnius.
It also sent a report to the Follow-up Meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Belgrade (4 October 1977 – 8 March 1978).
It became more active again in early 1979 and published further documents primarily protesting arrests of various dissidents, including Antanas Terleckas, and statements critical of the Czechoslovakian government and the Soviet–Afghan War.
[2] Bronius Laurinavičius, a Catholic priest, was admitted in January 1979 but he died in a suspicious traffic accident on November 25, 1981.
Vytautas Skuodis, a professor of geology, also joined the group but was arrested in November 1979 for the possession of a 300-page manuscript titled Spiritual Genocide of Lithuania.