Jan 6, 2012

Remarks by NED President Carl Gershman at Vaclav Havel Memorial Tribute

January 6, 2012
Washington, D.C.

The name that Bedrich Smetana gave to those final explosive passages of his masterpiece, Ma Vlast, was “Glory Returns to Bohemia.” He hoped that from the melody of this symphonic poem, that was based on a famous Hussite hymn, would inspire what he called “the resurrection and the future happiness and glory of the Czech nation.” Today, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Charter 77, we honor the memory of Vaclav Havel, the man who more than anyone brought that happiness and glory to the Czech nation, and whose actions and words have given hope to people throughout the world who aspire to a life of democratic freedom and human dignity.

Our program today recalls an evening five years ago when we gathered at the Library of Congress, where Havel was then in residence, to honor him. At Havel’s insistence, the program for the evening featured dissidents from some of the world’s most repressive countries. The Iranian exile Ladan Boroumand remembers how Havel used the time dedicated to honoring him “to give visibility and support to obscure dissidents from around the world, those men and women known to no one…but the security forces in their respective countries, and with a little bit of luck to NED.” Thus did this hero, she writes, so gracefully and discretely give “his audience an invaluable lesson of humility and empathy.”

So our program today recalls that precedent. We will hear from Rebiya Kadeer, the Uyghur leader who was a speaker that evening at the Library; the Iranian exiled writer and NED Board Member Azar Nafisi; the Chinese scholar Li Xiaorong, who is the key representative in this country of the Charter 08 movement in China; the Syrian human rights defender Radwan Ziadeh, who was in Prague just last month at a conference organized by the Havel Library; the Ethiopian opposition leader Birtukan Midekssa, who has been called the Aung San Suu Kyi of her country; and by video from Aung San Suu Kyi herself and Oswaldo Paya in Cuba, both of whom enjoyed Havel’s friendship and counsel. We will also hear from Jean Bethke Elshtain, a former NED Board member who knew Havel and wrote about him at the end of her seminal book Democracy on Trial; and William Luers, who was the U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during Havel’s dissident days in the 1980s and who, with his wife Wendy, who is also with us this morning, is helping to launch a branch of the Havel Library here in the United States.

At the end of this program, I will introduce Madeleine Albright, at which point we will establish a formal link with the parallel memorial meeting that the Havel Library is now holding at the Archa Theater in Prague. Let me note that other memorial meetings are also being held today in Minsk at the office of the Belarusan opposition leader Alaksandar Milinkievic; in Seoul, sponsored by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, which organized in Prague in 2003 the 4th International Conference on Human Rights in North Korea; and at a Mass in Miami at the Church of Corpus Christi, organized at the initiative of the Directorio Revolutionario.

The Dalai Lama could not be with us, and I have been asked to read his message.

The Polish writer Adam Michnik also could not be with us, and this is the message that he sent.

Havel’s close friend from Slovakia, Martin Butora, in his message, distinguishes optimism from hope, which Havel, he writes, called “a dimension of the soul” which is not a prognostication but “an orientation of the heart…[that] transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.” Martin quotes a letter that Havel wrote to Alexander Dubcek in 1969, on the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion. Envisaging possible future scenarios for Czechoslovakia, Havel wrote that “Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance; it can help people realize that it is always possible to stick with one’s ideals and have integrity; that there are values worth fighting for; and that there are leaders worth believing in.” In this letter, Martin writes, Havel “had inadvertently defined the blueprint for his attitude to life.”

There are other messages that are contained in the papers made available as you entered. I want to just note briefly the message from Ales Michalevic, the young Belarusan leader who spoke at the Library of Congress gathering – he ran for president in 2009, was arrested and tortured, and is now living in exile in Prague -- and who enumerates the many ways Havel helped the democracy movement in Belarus. “His name,” he writes, “is very often mentioned as an example of when the few but strong in their belief gained the upper hand over the vast, ineffective, corrupted and undemocratic state system; almost a miracle, which so many Belarusan hope to happen one day in their country.”

Another message is from the Egyptian intellectual Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who attended the dissidents conference that Havel convened in Prague in 2007, and who reflects on the historic events of the last year and concludes by saying that that “What came to be called the Arab Spring would not have come about without the inspiration and modeling of courage that Vaclav Havel represented for us in the Arab region.”

Finally, we have included in the papers made available to you a copy of the introduction that Havel wrote to a collection of essays by Dr. Andrei Sakharov that were assembled by Sakharov’s widow and Havel’s friend -- and our friend -- Elena Bonner. It was sent to us by Elena’s son and daughter, Alyosha and Tatiana, who regret that they could not be with us today. Let it be noted that one of Havel’s final acts was to call upon the Russian movement to unite as the protests mounted in the aftermath of last month’s election. At the demonstration on December 24, which was attended by over 100,000 people and which was held on Moscow’s Sakharov Propect, a minute of silence was observed at the beginning to honor Havel. What Havel wrote at the conclusion of his introduction to the Sakharov essays applies also to himself. Sakharov’s writings, he said, “will inspire not only us – his contemporaries – but also generations of citizens to come, who cannot be indifferent to the fate and future of our planet.”

We will now hear from our speakers in the order in which they appear in the program.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Madeleine Albright, our former Secretary of State and the chair of the National Democratic Institute, one of NED’s four core grantees. It was 21 years ago this week that Madeleine first met Havel. The occasion was NDI’s first visit to Prague. Madeleine, who was Vice-Chair of NDI at the time – she soon thereafter joined the NED Board -- went there with Tom Melia, who is also with us today. Havel had been elected President just the week before, and when they started reviewing for him how they might help and mentioned advice on developing an electoral law, Havel jumped in immediately and said “Get your experts here on Friday.” Seeing their stunned reaction, he compromised and said, “OK, Monday it is.” And so the friendship with Madeleine began. When Havel visited Washington later that month, Madeleine’s home was his advance office, and she prepped him on all the so-called “presentational” issues that he and his staff would have to be mindful of during his visit to our capital. I’m told by Ken Wollack that at one point Havel said, “Now there’s a staffer.” She soon became a little bit more than that.

To our Czech friends, let me note that we also mourn and remember today the Czech writer Josef Svorecky, Havel’s friend and ours, who died earlier this week.

A final word: Following Havel’s death, all but one Chinese news portal gave perfunctory or negative reports. The one exception, Netease, listed almost a thousand comments, the vast majority praising him for his contribution to Czech democracy and human rights around the world. Some 35,000 people voted on these comments, and the one that was the most popular was the response – “So completely well-said” – to Havel’s inaugural speech, in which he said, “For the last forty years your government has told you how great everything is and how many tons of steel you produce…I know you did not vote me in to repeat such lies to you. Your country has been given back to you, the people.” In keeping with Havel’s vision, let’s hope that China will be given back to the people, and Burma, Cuba, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tibet, East Turkestan, even North Korea. There is much work to do to help bring happiness and glory to the dark corners of the world, as Havel did for his and other nations. With that thought, we bid farewell to our friends in Prague, and it’s my honor now to introduce the Czech Ambassador to the United States, Petr Gandalovic.