Announcement
Dear friends!
On behalf of the Vaclav Havel Library let me welcome you to Prague. We are honoured, indeed, to have you as our guests for a couple of days, because the mission of the Library is not only to hold and make available materials related to Havel’s life and work, but also to foster what might be called the Havelian spirit or tradition. Through events like this, the Library will give a voice to those who are contributing to the diverse chorus of contemporary culture, a culture that reflects both social and individual truth. The Library aspires to become an international forum for dialogue and open communication; and to serve as a space for free-ranging conversations about the future shape of our common world.
On the eve of Human Rights Day 2011, the Havel Library has decided to mark the occasion by organizing – in co-operation with the People in Need Foundation and Prague’s Archa Theatre – an international symposium entitled The Epoch-Making Power of Free Speech.
The symposium will open with a seminar on the role of freedom of expression and the importance of safeguarding that freedom in the international community, which is becoming ever more globalized, interconnected and interdependent, while remaining culturally and religiously heterogeneous and diverse.
A press foyer called Focus on Freedom of Speech will be organized in the afternoon to enable journalists to meet the participants of the seminar along with the international guests taking part in the evening event.
The exhibitions called The Press Against Persecution – Cuban Samizdat 2000 – 2010 and Silenced Voices: An Exhibition About Murdered Human Rights Activists in Russia will be on display at Archa Theatre during the whole day and open not only to the participants at the symposium, but to the general public.
The grand finale of the day-long Human Rights Day program will be an Evening of Solidarity dedicated to people whose freedom of speech is being denied and to all brave individuals, both known and unknown, who are persecuted because they have refused to yield to the pressure of autocratic regimes. Three names clearly stand out here, and it is these three personalities who will be silent partners of our Symposium and will receive special recognition. They are: Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer and literary critic who last year was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of human rights and who is still serving his eleven-year term in jail; Laura Pollan, leader of the Cuban protest group Ladies in White, who died last month in Habana, and Ivan Martin Jirous, known as “Magor,” who also recently passed away – a poet and the spiritual father of the Czech “underground,” a brave man with a generous heart, a wild spirit and imagination, who resisted totalitarianism all his life and in his own way and despite his many incarcerations, managed to infect a whole generation of young people with his spirit.
The evening program will with a panel discussion among human rights activists from countries where people are still fighting for their freedoms, for their right to express their opinions and have free access to information. That will be followed by a reading from “A Word about Words,” an essay by Vaclav Havel written only months before the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and by music from The Plastic People of the Universe (whose persecution and silencing by the Communist regime led to the creation of Charter 77).
To conclude our celebration of Human Rights Day 2011, all the participants and the audience will be invited to a reception, not only to enjoy a rich selection of Czech food and beverages, but also to express their individual commitment to freedom of speech by indulging in informal communication with each other.
Martin Palous, Director of Vaclav Havel Library