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Closing words at a conference of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba
By Vaclav Havel

Valdštejn Palace, Prague, September 18th, 2004

Ladies and gentlemen,

At the close of the conference it only remains for me to thank all of you who came and identified yourselves with this initiative, all of you who have become members of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba and all of you who have brought information, themes and ideas. It was one of the biggest meetings of its type in Europe and I think it was of value. It was of value in the same way that every individual signature on a petition or vote, every meeting, every conference, every viewpoint expressed has value. All of these things create pressure and every such signature or action brings freedom in Cuba a small step closer. Today Cuba is like one big prison but the aim of this conference is to call not for the walls of that prison to be torn down, but for the bell to be rung. Ringing the bell is important if we are talking about every bell on every door. We here remember that we too rang bells at one time and that it had a purpose and was a success. We rang our keys here in those days.

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

Note: Václav Havel then took his keys out his of pocket and rang them symbolically, as   they were rung in November 1989.

 

 

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About the author


Vaclav Havel Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel is one of the best known citizens of the Czech Republic. He became famous as Velvet Revolution, and in December 1989 he was elected President of the Czechoslovakia and later on of the Czech Republic. He was awarded numerous international prizes and honorary doctorates. Vaclav Havel was born in Prague on October 5, 1936. In 1951 he completed his compulsory schooling. Being the offspring of a prominent Praguebusinessmen's family, he was barred from pursuing regular studies afterwards. For fouryears, while taking an apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, he was attendingevening classes at a grammar school. It was at the age of nineteen that he started publishing studies and articles in literary and theater magazines. Family tradition hasled him toward embracing the humanist values of Czech culture that were suppressed or destroyedin the 1950s. As he was not allowed, due to his family background, to study humanities,he went on to a Technical University where he spent two years. After completing his military service, he worked as a stagehandat the ABC Theater and later, from 1960, in the Theater on the Balustrade. The lattertheater produced his first plays, most importantly The Garden Party (1963), a piece representing in an outstanding manner the strong regeneration tendencies prevailing in Czech culture and Czech society in the 1960s which culminated in the so-called Prague Spring of 1968. At that time Vaclav Havel was taking part in public and cultural life as one of the standard-bearersof the democratic concepts of Czech culture and society. In thesecond half of the 1960s his next plays, The Memorandum (1965) and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968), were performed. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops, which put an end to the Prague Spring regeneration process, Vaclav Havel did not abandon his convictions. Consequently, a lasting ban was imposed on publicationof his plays in Czechoslovakia. (In 1974 he even worked as a laborer in a brewery.) It was then that Vaclav Havel began to be known by the international public as a representative of the Czechoslovak intellectual opposition. As a citizen he protested against the extensive oppression marking the years of the so-called normalization.

 

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