Profile of the Speakers

Gregory Asmolov is a doctoral student at “New media, innovation and literacy” program at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research is focused on the role of crowdsourcing platforms in crisis situation and development of network institutions as a new mode of governance. Asmolov is a co-author of a recent report “Russian Network Society and Social change”. He is a contributor to “Runet Echo”, a project of “Global Voices Online”that analyzes the Russian Internet. He has consulted on information technology, new media, and social media projects for The World Bank and Internews Network, and worked at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. He also conducts trainings for and gives lectures about social and political role of new media in U.S, Russia, Israel and other countries. Asmolov has previously worked as a journalist for major Russian newspapers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta, and served as news editor and analyst for Israeli TV. Asmolov is a co-founder of Help Map, the crowdsourcing platform, which was used to coordinate assistance to victims of wildfires in Russia in 2010 and won a Russian National Internet Award for best project in the “State and Society” category. Currently he and his colleagues develop a new crowdsourcing platform for coordination of mutual aid in crisis situations Rynda.org

Veronika Bílková is a member of the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission). She is Lecturer in international law at the Charles University in Prague, Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relation and Diploma in International Law candidate at the University of Cambridge. She graduated in law, political science and French philology. She focuses on the theory of international law, international humanitarian law, the use of force, human rights and international criminal law.

Pedro Fuentes Cid is spokesman and member of the Political Commission of “Consejo Presidio Politico Cubano” an union of Cuban ex- political prisoners organizations. He was incarcerated for almost 16 years by the Castro regime. He opposed the Batista dictatorship and later the Castro regime after it declared itself to be an ally of the Soviet Union. At the time he was director of the “Pilot Consulate” at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the early days of the Revolution. Training nominated consuls before they went abroad to serve. After arriving to the US to reunite with his family he graduated with a Masters Degree in Advanced International Studies and also a Juris Doctor Degree in Civil law, both at the University of Miami. He has had since, for 22 years, a private practice as an Attorney at Law in the State of Florida. Has delivered conferences on the situation in Cuba in many Forums and was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by Romanian ex-President Emil Constantinescu.

Carl Gershman is President of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, congressionally supported grant-making institution with the mission to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. In addition to presiding over the Endowment’s grants program in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America, he has overseen the creation of the quarterly Journal of Democracy, International Forum for Democratic Studies, the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program, and the Center for International Media Assistance. He also took the lead in launching in New Delhi in 1999 the World Movement for Democracy, which is a global network of democracy practitioners and scholars.

Renáta Klečková serves as a legal adviser at the International Law Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. Her main responsibility is international criminal law and humanitarian law. In her official capacity she took part at various international conferences and forums (Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Review Conference of the Rome Statute, ICRC Conferences, the UN) and represents regularly the Czech Republic in COJUR, the expert group of the EU countries for the questions of international law. She has also had an active academic career, mainly at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno, where she obtained her Ph.D. degree in public international law (2010). She worked there as assistant professor of international law (2005 – 2007, specialized at international human rights law, refugee law).

Zdeněk Kühn is an Associate Professor at Charles University Law School, where he teaches legal theory and jurisprudence. He graduated from the Charles University Law School in 1997 and received his Ph.D. degree there in 2001. He holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Science Juridical Doctor (S.J.D.) degrees from the University of Michigan Law School. He has been awarded several prizes including the Hessel Yntema Prize, Berkeley, California, for the best article by a scholar under 40 (published in vol. 52 of the American Journal of Comp. Law). In December 2007, he was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic. He writes widely in the area of judicial methodology, comparative constitutional law and public law. Kühn has also had an active academic career, holding a number of teaching positions and being author of numerous publications both at home and abroad.

Peter Molnar is Senior Research Fellow and one of the founders of the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University. He was a leading participant in the transition to democracy at the end of the communist dictatorship. As a member of the Hungarian Parliament (1990 – 1998) he was a principal drafter of the 1996 Hungarian media law as well as numerous other laws on media and cultural policy. He was member of the Hungarian Radio-Television Board`s Complaint Commission (2001 – 2010), has been legislative advisor since 2002; has taught courses on freedom of speech since 1994, including at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California in Berkeley, the Graduate School of Journalism and Communication of the University of Colorado, Cardozo School of Law and Columbia Law School; was German Marshall Fellow, two times Fulbright Fellow and Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University. In 2006, he drafted the Budapest Declaration for the Freedom of the Internet that was signed by many media scholars. In 2007, the staged version of his novel, Searchers, won the awards for best alternative and best independent play in Hungary.

Daniel Rietiker is Senior Lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights. He is a member of the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg (founded by René Cassin). He holds Law Degree at University of Zurich and Master in International Relations (Graduate Institute of International Relations, Geneva). He has PhD at University of Lausanne in the field of Arms control and disarmament treaties. He is author of many publications, especially in the field of Human Rights.

Ahmad Sharief is a political officer at the Egyptian Embassy in Khartoum. He served earlier in Egypt’s diplomatic missions in Rwanda and Prague. While in Cairo, he worked at the Human Rights Department and the Arab Department of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has been member of Egypt’s delegation to the League of Arab States. He was also Egypt’s representative at the 48th and 49th Ordinary Sessions of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. He holds an M.A. in International Human Rights Law from the American University in Cairo. The focus of his research has been the conflict between freedom of expression and other human rights. His current fields of interest include freedom of expression in multi-religious societies, democratization, challenges of transition to democracy in post-revolutionary contexts, development in sub-Saharan Africa and Sudanese affairs.

Ladislav Vyhnánek works as a lecturer at the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science, Faculty of Law, Masaryk University. He also serves as a law clerk at the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. Apart from his work, he is a member of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization. He is one of the co-authors of the new commentary on the Czech Constitution (2010).

Ziadeh Radwan is a Visiting Scholar at Dubai Initiative at Kennedy school of Government at Harvard University. He is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria and co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the managing editor of the Transitional Justice in the Arab World Project. Before that, Ziadeh was editor-in-chief of Tyarat magazine in 2001 – 2002 and secretary of the Syrian Organization for Transparency. in 2010 he was awarded the Democracy Courage Tributes award on behave of the Human Rights movement in Syria by the World Movement for Democracy at Jakarta- Indonesia. Ziadeh has been one of the major players in the “Damascus Spring,” a period of intense debate about politics, social issues and calls for reform in Syria after the death of President Hafez al-Asad in 2000. He is a frequent political commentator on several U.S., European, and Middle Eastern media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, B.B.C. and Al-Hurra. He also writes a bi-monthly op-ed for the leading Arab daily, Al-Hayat.

Htein Lin is a Burmese artist (painting, installation, performance) and has also worked in Burma as a comedian and actor. He spent almost seven years in jail (1998 – 2004) for political reasons where he developed his artistic practice, using items available to him like bowls and cigarette lighters in the absence of brushes to make paintings and monoprints on the cotton prison uniform. He has lived in London since 2006, and regularly participates in exhibitions and performance art festivals globally, using his work to draw attention to the situation in Burma and the state of freedom of speech and political prisoners. He is a founding member of the Burmese language arts website www.kaungkin.com to which he contributes literature and artistic criticism and in 2010 curated the first Burmese Arts Festival in London.

Dolkun Isa is the general secretary of the World Uyghur Congress, and president of the East Turkestan Union in Europe. He is a former student-leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1988 in East Turkistan (as know Xinjiang Uyghur Atuonom region in China). He studied physics at Xin Jiang University. He founded the Union of Students – Science and Cultural (USSC) on December 1987 in Xinjiang University. On June 1988, the democratic students demonstration was organized by USSC in Urumchi. Because of this, he was house arrested and dismissed from the university on September, 1988. After enduring persecution from the Chinese government, Isa fled China and sought asylum in Germany in 1996, and became a citizen of Germany in 2006. He went on to receive a Master’s degree in Politics and Sociology from Gazi University in Turkey and a degree in computer science in Munich.

Omar Rodrigez Saludes is a representative of Cuban independent journalism and exiled ex-political prisoner currently living in Spain. Owing to the political activism, he was expelled from his occupation in the Havana dock. In 1995 he was one of the founders, together with Raúl Rivera and a few others, of the independent journalism movement. He initiated there as a graphic reporter. Since the 2001 he presided the news agency called Nueva Prensa Cubana (New Cuban Press). He belongs to the so called „Group of 75“- opposition activists who were arrested and sentenced by the Castro government in March 2003. This repressive wave is commonly known as „Cuban Black Spring“. The trial took place within 48 hours without the possibility of consultation with defenders. After appeal to the Supreme Court, the life sentence was modified to 27 years of confinement in prison with maximum security. Having spent seven years and four months behind bars, he arrived to Spain in July 2010 as a person expelled from his country for political reasons. According to Reporters Without Borders, he "was charged with endangering the state’s independence or territorial integrity.' The court also found him guilty of giving 'distorted’ information about Cuba’s reality to 'illegal’ and 'hostile’ publications 'with the manifest intention of attacking the Cuban revolution.'