Prague, Jan 3 (CTK) – The Vaclav Havel Library in Prague plans a series of events marking the 40th anniversary of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto whose signatory and one of its initiators Havel (1936-2011) was.
The library will hold a conference on Charter 77 and issue Havel’s text that he considered lost.
The manifesto, the first text of the Charter (Charta) 77 opposition movement in the communist Czechoslovakia, was released on January 6 in 1977. It criticises the violations of human and civic rights in the country.
On the same day, on Friday, a special event will be staged outside the villa in Stresovicka street in Prague where Havel’s friend, translator Zdenek Urbanek, lived and from where the manifesto was released into the world under dramatic circumstances.
Havel described them in his 100-page report that he typed after his return from prison and then hid somewhere in 1977.
“I have not known for long where it is. I may find it one day,” Havel said in an interview with journalist Karel Hvizdala in the mid-1980s.
Urbanek’s grandson David Dusek found the text in his inheritance a few weeks ago and he gave it to the Vaclav Havel Library for publishing.
This is just the first chapter of the report that the library decided to publish in the form of an unsaleable facsimile in 500 numbered copies. The unique print entitled The CH77 Case – I. Assault will be officially presented during the Friday event.
Besides, Dusek found Havel’s diary from 1977 in Urbanek’s inheritance. It depicts several months of his life following the release of the Charter 77 manifesto that he spent in custody.
The editors of Havel’s work consider the fragmentary notes in the diary the most intimate and inward text written by Havel, playwright, dissident and the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president (1989-2003).
The Vaclav Havel Library has also published a replica of Havel’s Diary.
The programme in memory of Charter 77 will continue on January 7 when a one-day conference of the Charter 77 signatories will be held in the Lucerna Palace in Prague centre.
Its programme is divided into four sections: the sources of Charter 77, Charter 77 and the samizdat, Charter 77 and its reflection abroad and Charter 77 and history. The speakers include its signatories Dana Nemcova, Daniel Kroupa, Martin Palous, Anna Sabatova, Frantisek Janouch and Petr Pithart.
