Havel reads names of Czechs who strove for freedom, live no more

Havel, a former dissident and the main protagonist of the events that started with a brutal police action against a calm student demonstration in Prague on November 17, 1989, and that culminated in the fall of the communist regime in end 1989, spoke at a conference held in the Czech Senate.

Among the above personalities, Havel mentioned Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, Nobel Prize winner poet Jaroslav Seifert, musician Milan Hlavsa and his first wife Olga Havlova.

Havel devoted his words to all people who "in the gloomy twenty years between the Soviet occupation [to crush the Prague Spring reform movement in 1968] and the November change of regime" were rewriting samizdat texts, organising private seminars, masses, concerts and theatre performances and who were spreading various magazines and books, smuggling them abroad and creating background for the gradually emerging independent initiatives.

He did not omit emigrants who supported "the never-ending struggle against the totalitarian power" from abroad.

Havel said these people came from various walks of life and had different opinions, but all of them pursued the same ideological values.

"They followed up the work of freedom fighters from the previous decades," Havel said.

Senator Karel Schwazrenberg, former foreign minister, recalled foreign aid in the struggle against the Communist totalitarian regime.

He said only a broad international resistance can prevent the arrival of new similar ideologies.

Schwarzenberg, who lived abroad before November 1989 and who was in contact with Czech dissidents, said it is necessary to prove that people in the post-communist countries are worthy freedom, that they are spiritually free and that they believe in the rule of law.

He pointed out that many of those who fought against Nazism and Communism were very soon eliminated from politics after the defeat of the regime.

"It is obvious that heroism, equality and will to resist [totalitarian regimes] are not the best qualification for further political life with all its intrigues," Schwarzenberg said.

Former deputy prime minister and dissident Alexandr Vondra said the four decades of life spent under the totalitarian regime also affect the two decades of life in freedom.

This is also visible in how people mark national holidays, he said.

Vondra said people often lack pride and self-confidence based on respect for themselves and for their past.

"It seems that we need yet another 20 years to become fully emancipated, one more generation that will grow up in freedom," Vondra aid.

Simon Panek, one of the 1989 student leaders, said it is clear now that the change of regime has not yet changed people's behaviour.

He said this will take more time and that we are "halfway through now."

Panek also rejected destructive criticism of the Czech Republic's EU membership.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz