Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Vaclav Havel, playwright, political dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia and that country's first democratically elected President, died in Prague on 18 December 2011. Below is a short review of Vaclav Havel's long relationship with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL):

On 4 July 1994, US President Bill Clinton formally accepted an offer from Czech Republic President Havel to relocate Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty /(RFE/RL) from Munich to Prague. "With this move," President Clinton said, "the radios begin a new chapter in the continuing struggle for democracy throughout the former Communist bloc." 

The first broadcast from RFE/RL's new headquarters in the former Czechoslovakian Federal Parliament building took place on 10 March 1995. Vaclav Havel officially welcomed RFE/RL to Prague, 8 September 1995, saying, "I am not sure that I would not have been in prison for another couple of years were it not for a certain amount of publicity which I had because of these radio stations."

Below are excerpts from recent tributes to Vaclav Havel that show his continued interest in Radio Europe/Radio Liberty.

  

RFE/RL President Steven W. Korn made the following statement on the death of Vaclav Havel: 'Friends of democracy, free media and the fundamental dignity of all people have lost a great friend today, with the passing of Vaclav Havel. In everything that he did as an artist, campaigner and statesman, he championed the rights of the powerless and of all who believed as he did that, "Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate." RFE and its Czechoslovak Service were honored to air Havel’s works during the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s, and gratified when he invited RFE/RL to move its operations to Prague in the early 1990’s, after the “Velvet Revolution” he did so much to spark and lead. (RFE/RL press release, 18 Dec 2011)

'It was with great satisfaction that we could welcome RFE in Prague after the fall of the Iron Curtain and thus start to repay our debt for its credible work,' said Havel in a statement in May 2011 on the 60th anniversary of RFE’s Czech and Slovak language broadcasts. 'I hope that RFE continues to pursue its mission in today's postmodern and politically unstable world: defense of human rights, civic rights and human dignity.' (Broadcasting Board of Governors press release, 19 Dec 2011)

Three days before Vaclav Havel passed away, he penned a letter of encouragement to eight Belarusian political prisoners. A gift to RFE/RL’s Belarusian Service, Radio Svaboda, the letter is a testament to the cease-less support and advocacy for human rights -- especially in Belarus -- for which Havel was known. Though he never got the opportunity to send the letters to the Belarusian political prisoners, on the day of his death, December 18th, Radio Svaboda broadcast his words on the Belarusian airwaves." (RFE/RL, Off Mic blog, 19 Dec 2011) 

Havel was linked to Radio Free Europe, heart and soul. When communism came crashing down in 1989, he said he had learned about the United States during the Cold War from the Voice of America and about his own country through the "surrogate broadcasts" of RFE. When RFE/RL moved its headquarters from Munich to Prague in the mid-1990s, Havel thought of the most delicious of ironies: He saw to it that the U.S. broadcaster would inhabit the old communist-era parliament building next to the National Museum at Wenceslas Square -- for the price of just one Czech crown a year. Independent journalists working in the name of freedom took over the offices of party hacks and apparatchiks. (Jeffrey Gedmin, former president of RFE/RL, Foreign Policy, 19 December 2011)