240-2541-Havel ENG.Indd
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
SPECIAL ISSUE: Dedicated to Vaclav Havel Sunday 9th December 2012 HAVELˇS POWER OF POWERLESS IS STILL CHANGiNG THE WORLD MADELEINE ALBRIGHT ● THE 14TH DALAI LAMA ● YOKO ONO ● ALI HEWSON ● KARIM ALRAWI ● MARY ROBINSON ● LADAN BOROUMAND ● BILL SHIPSEY ● LEONID VOLKOV ● TARIK NESHNASH ET. ● www.IHNED.cz © PeTeR SiS, 2012 – FOR HN 2 VH www.IHNED.cz www.IHNED.cz VH 3 Sunday 9th December Sunday 9th December 1 Lucie ‘Love and truth Karim Tvarůžková must prevail Alrawi 2 over lies and 3 hatred!’ We should all say 4 Egyptin writer nd humn rights tivist HN Editor-in-hief ssistnt nd hed of IHNED.z this every day he fi rst time I read Václav Havel’s essay on re- hat is a subject like human rights doing sisting a post-totalitarian regime, The Power of in a business daily like Hospodarske no- the Powerless, was in an English translation du- viny? Aren’t we supposed to write about ring the late 1980s. I was teaching at a university accounting, or profi t and loss? Tin Cairo while spending much of my time working for 5 WEven from an accountant’s point of view, the big- the newly created, though not legal, Egyptian Organi- gest investment the Czech Republic has made in the zation for Human Rights. The regime we were living twenty-three years of its existence has been the in- under was not in Havel’s sense ‘post-totalitarian,’ but vestment in our own freedom – in the freedom to dictatorial: power was applied crudely and without the think and live the way we want, the freedom to be pretence of ideological legitimization. A couple of ye- successful, to make money, even the freedom not to ars later, I was arrested for my human rights advocacy, have to make money. interrogated, and eventually released by State Security In a few days, it’ll be a year since the death of one of aft er an international campaign led by British newspa- 6 our biggest investors – President Vaclav Havel. per The Guardian. What came as a surprise during my We’re not trying to build him a memorial with this interrogation was discovering who had informed on special issue. What we’re trying to say is that we ha- me: academics, politicians, people I thought had no ven’t forgott en – even though certain events in the reason to be such willing state informers. Czech Republic suggest otherwise. The recent electi- A year later, as a Fulbright International Scholar at ons, for example, raised the hopes of many a Com- university in the United States, I was writing studies munist for a return to power – although so far only on Middle Eastern theatre, state censorship, and the in the regions. possible impact emerging new technologies might have 7 What we haven’t forgott en is that freedom is a pri- on the social and political conditions in the region. I vilege, and that there are billions of people in the found the work of Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis world who are denied that privilege. Freedom is not on media and its relationship to power to be instructive something to be taken for granted, but something guides to action. Hopes for change led by technology that needs constant care and att ention. were reinforced with the rise of the World Wide Web. One of President Havel’s principal beliefs was that I drew inspiration from the work of Kurt Gödel, the each and every one of us can change the world, no mat- mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorem see- ter how invisible or powerless we might feel at fi rst. med to me proof that no totalitarian system, however 8 We might be just a small newspaper from a place brutal, could ever control and systematise everything. many still call Czechoslovakia, but we don’t want to Yoko Ono There is always something that escapes structuring, Artist nd pee tivist pass up on that opportunity. and therefore resistance is always possible. This issue features, and is dedicated to, people who I wrote then that the internet was the one place whe- are doing far more than us in their eff orts to change re the power of dictators was the least eff ective, a pla- the world. ce to imagine a bett er world and make it a reality. In When President Havel became Hospodarske No- Orphaned children of Hutus murdered by Tutsis during the genocide in 2002, a group of us set up a nonprofi t organization in viny’s Editor-in-Chief six years ago, he was given the Rwanda later found by volunteers of humanitarian organization UNICEF. oko Ono’s 80th birthday HN: If you staged your Bed-Ins Beirut (the Arab Development and Media Network), 9 freedom to choose the topics the paper would address. Eventually most of these children did not survive since they contracted is coming up next year, for Peace today, would they be raising funds for a free journalist training programme Instead of covering the stock market, he decided to fo- cholera and other infectious diseases. This photograph was taken in 1994 in but she’s still relentlessly considered art? across the whole Middle East which would include me- cus on human rights abuses around the world. Instead Never losing faith a camp in Goma on the border between Congo and Rwanda. campaigning for human I don’t think the Bed-Ins we once dia ethics (reinforcing personal integrity, Havel’s ‘living of texts about the internal political struggles he favou- PHOTO BY: ANTONIN KRATOCHViL / Vii Yrights and virtues just as she once held with John were considered in truth’) and internet literacy (distinguishing the truth red texts on Russia’s opposition parties, for example, did with her late husband John art by ordinary people. They knew from lies). Over the following eight years we trained or the violence and lack of freedom in Myanmar. Lennon. that it was a peace protest. hundreds of journalists from Morocco to Bahrain. In his editorial, Havel expressed the belief that our A few weeks ago, Mrs. Ono star- I would like to think that our eff orts contributed in fate is our own responsibility. ‘Being responsible for ted her own fashion line, produ- HN: Does your dance music fit some way to the Arab Spring that swept away some of 10 the whole world is part of every man’s fate, no matt er in us, Havel issued cing clothes which she once de- within your human rights cam- the dictatorships in the Middle East. The vacuum left how much or how litt le each of us care,’ he wrote. signed for Lennon; she again lit paining? was quickly fi lled by the Muslim Brotherhood, a party We consider ourselves lucky to have that responsi- up the Imagine Peace Tower in Dance music is simply good for created in the 1920s and modelled aft er Benito Musso- bility. We’re glad to have it. We think the Czech Repub- Reykjavík, shining into the night your body and spirit as a form lini’s Italian Fascist party. If during the previous two or lic needs this Havel special issue as much as the rest sky in Lennon’s memory; and, of music. It’s also a good way to three decades we hadn’t already been in a Havel period of the world does. It’s our mission to make sure the last but not least, she awarded acquaint people with the sensiti- of post-totalitarianism, we were there now. The Muslim heartbeat of freedom continues to be heard. a permanent challenge this year’s Lennon-Ono Grant for vity of poetry. Brotherhood is imposing an oppressive, non-democra- Peace to Pussy Riot. tic ideology in the countries it governs. These new regi- 11 „Pussy Riot stood fi rmly in the- HN: Are simpler messages more mes, so far in Egypt and Tunisia but in some cases also ir belief in freedom of expression likely to get across to people in those pending in Yemen and Libya (and possibly Syria and made all women of the world contemporary art? and Jordan as well), are potentially no less autocratic IHNED.cz proud to be women. I consider Art is a way of life. It should than the regimes they aim to replace. They certainly The Czech version of this issue can be found at Pussy Riot fellow activists,“ said always be as simple as breathing. have a stronger ideology. revolutionary leader to denounce could always expect to enjoy the cess and well-being of Aung San Throughout his career in public Mrs. Ono. It should always be as complex as But unlike the time when Europe lived under Soviet www.ihned.cz/havel2012 the Soviet tyrants who had long upper hand in battling evil. But Suu Kyi. life, Vaclav Havel practised politics the workings of our body. dominance, the Middle East now lacks a powerful mi- conspired to oppress his country. complacency was not in Havel’s In October 2011, he signed the of a type designed not to reflect HN: Is it important that Pussy Riot litary overlord. What it does suff er from are medieval, 12 The tapestry at the newly renamed Vaclav Havel Air- Instead, his most urgent request vocabulary. Budapest Appeal, calling upon Eu- popular opinion, but to elevate and is a group of women? HN: What about the messages that authoritarian regimes such as the ones in Saudi Arabia port in Prague was presented to Foundation Vize 97 by was that the United States help Like Tomáš Masaryk, Havel cele- rope to take a stand against any enlighten it; the kind of leadership I don‘t think it matt ers if the ar- President Havel put across? and Qatar, which share a common ideology with the Amnesty International and fi ve artists – U2 members the Russian people in making the- He worried tht brated the Czech nation at its best, government – even a freely-elected that prompted us to open our eyes tist is a woman or man.