Prague, July 20 (CTK) – The Dalai Lama will receive representatives of the Czechs Support Tibet group and other NGOs who will pass congratulations on his 80th birthday to him in early August, director of the Vaclav Havel Library Marta Smolikova and former environment minister Martin Bursik told CTK yesterday.
The meeting will be held in Dharamsala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile has its seat.
The “congratulations from Czech citizens” was prompted by the NGO MOST (Bridge), that was joined by the Czechs Support Tibet, the Vaclav Havel Library, FORUM 2000, People in Need, Open Society Fund, o.s. LUNGTA and o.s. POTALA.
The campaign was also joined by a number of personalities, such as Ivan Havel, brother of the late president Vaclav Havel, former presidential candidate Jan Svejnar, former dissident singer Marta Kubisova, literary historian Martin C. Putna, film director Olga Sommerova, designer Maxim Velcovsky and priest Ladislav Heryan.
The congratulations will include a gift. It will be a tea cup by designer Borek Sipek that will highlight the “firm link between the Czech Republic and Tibet, Vaclav Havel and His Holiness Dalai Lama.”
In the saucer, Vaclav Havel and the Dalai Lama are mirrored.
Forum 2000 Foundation chairman Jakub Klepal has said in a press release that members of the delegation will invite the Dalai Lama to again come to the Forum 2000 conference in 2016.
“The close link between the Czech Republic and Tibet must be maintained,” Klepal said.
The Dalai Lama and Havel were friends. The Dalai Lama visited Czechoslovakia at Havel’s invitation for the first time in February 1990, which sparked off China’s protests. Since then, the Dalai Lama has visited Prague nine times.
