The Velvet Revolution at 34: Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, and the hope that it inspires today

 "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."- Václav Havel IHT (21 February 1990) 

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

What was achieved 34 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? 

It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships. In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the transition:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

Months earlier in the summer of 1989 Jiří Křižan and Václav Havel had drafted "A Few Sentences" Petition calling for the release of political prisoners and respect for human rights. Tens of thousands of Czechoslovakians signed the petition and it contributed to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia.

What took place on November 17, 1989 was the nonviolent triumph of the power of the powerless over a brutal totalitarian regime.This is in profound contrast to the centenary of the start of World War One that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy and instead ushered in two totalitarian systems: Nazism and Communism, a Second World War, a Cold War, and the age of nuclear weapons.

The Velvet Revolution was not inevitable, but a combination of providence, free will, and principled human action. The "Velvet Revolution" achieved profound non-violent change without wholesale slaughter and violence associated historically with revolutions. A cursory look would claim that the "revolution" took 11 days in November for the Communists to relinquish power. 

Some say it began in 1976 after the beating and arrest of the rock band, the Plastic People of the Universe, led to a number of intellectuals, Vaclav Havel, among them drafting and signing Charter 77 challenging the Czech communists to honor the rights outlined in their own constitution, and in the Helsinki accords which the communist government had signed in 1975.

Plastic People of the Universe

However some nonviolent theoreticians place the roots of the 1989 success even further back in the nonviolent response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, an effort by Czechoslovak communist reformers to build socialism with a human face, Havel wrote the following to the Czechoslovak President Alexander Dubcek who had been one of the reformers later purged: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." The response by Czechs in what later became known as a civilian based defense, nonviolently bogged down the advancing Soviet army for eight months. The nonviolent lessons learned in 1968 planted seeds that bore fruit in 1989.  

Havel passed away on December 18, 2011 but his legacy endures and his ideas remains relevant raising the call to vigilance at a conference at Charles University titled “Freedom and its Enemies”:

The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view.

I've had the privilege to have walked the streets and breathed the air of Prague in May of 1990, barely five months after Havel went to the Castle in December of 1989, and returned nineteen years later in October of 2009 to participate in Forum 2000 and see the changes that had taken place. 

Although Czechs may no longer look in awe at all that they have accomplished after walking around the center of the city visiting shops and a grocery store, and talking with Czechs over a few beers I left impressed by all that had been accomplished, and with an overwhelming sense of happiness at bearing witness to a flowering of freedom and creativity that continues to endure and thrive. 

Vaclav Havel greets crowds in Wenceslas Square during 'Velvet Revolution'.

Victims of dictatorship the world over have experienced first hand the solidarity of the Czech and Slovak peoples. Further evidence that 34 years later the ideals of the Velvet Revolution endure.

 In Cuba, three years ago the San Isidro Movement, a collective of artists founded in 2018 to resist new restrictions on artistic freedom imposed by Havana's Decree 349 has marked a before and after in Cuban history with their civic protest, and the regime's violent reaction. 

Artists from the San Isidro Movement celebrating Cuban culture

Two years ago members of the San Isidro Movement together with compatriots in the diaspora challenged the dictatorship's culture of death embodied in the phrase "Patria o Muerte" (Homeland or Death) with a song titled "Patria y Vida" (Homeland and Life). Let us pray that soon Cuba will have its nonviolent revolution and its people freed from seven decades of first authoritarian, then totalitarian dictatorship and the old phrase of a democratic Cuba returns "Patria y Libertad" (Homeland and Freedom).

The Velvet Revolution gives us hope that freedom can be achieved in Cuba, and Cuban artists are on the front lines of this effort. Some of them, including Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez, "El Osorbo" are enduring prison today in Cuba.

34 years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall did not fall, it was torn down by free Germans

  "It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” Order to Border Guards October 1, 1973.

"If we get shot, will you write about us?" - E. German Student, demonstrating against GDR regime 

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Thirty four years ago today the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961. with barbed-wire fence followed by a 100-mile wall and more than 300 watchtowers to spot and shoot escapeesand the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

On this day, 34 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. This video helps to explain why this was a liberation for the people of communist East Berlin. pic.twitter.com/72yXuLVnNG

— Communist Terror (@CommunistTerror) November 9, 2023

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down, at least 140 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is the Berlin Wall Museum, which offers a complete listing of the 140 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

We should also remember those who celebrated or ignored this scar that ran through the heart of Germany for 28 years and defended or rationalized the murder of unarmed civilians while hobnobbing with the East German leadership. What is their moral responsibility for these horrors?

Fidel Castro on the Berlin Wall in 1972

Fidel Castro's first visit to Berlin began on June 13, 1972 and at various points, the Cuban dictator addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. At Brandenburg Gate on June 14 in the afternoon (pictured above), he addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army, who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Later in the evening, Premier Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:

It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with great admiration for you and for your services.

Later in the same speech Mr. Castro offered his take on what he saw there and the prospects for the future:

We have no doubt that a great political and revolutionary victory has been won in the GDR. You have created the foundations for the future, a truly revolutionary state, a border state to whom the future belongs. You are the new generation, which will continue this work.

He spent most of his time there, accompanied by Erich Honecker, who, as Central Committee secretary for security matters in 1961, was in charge of constructing the Berlin Wall and, by 1971, had become the dictator of East Germany through a power struggle and Soviet support the de facto head of state.

Erich Honecker and Angela Davis in 1972

Angela Davis also paid visits to East Germany (in 1965 and 1972).  During her 1972 visit, she was received by Erich Honecker. She celebrated the East German communist regime and refused to criticize, or recognize its shortcomings on human rights. She refused to make any mention of the Berlin Wall in her autobiography.

This practice extended beyond East Germany.

Angela Davis also visited Cuba in 1972, and Fidel Castro made her an honorary member of the infamous Committee in the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Neighborhood committees that spied on Cubans to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship.

Innocent people were being killed in Germany until 1989, and are still massacred in Cuba today.

 

Chris Gueffroy killed at the Berlin Wall on Feb 5, 1989

 

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy, was born on June 21, 1968, and shot dead by East German border guards on February 5, 1989, while trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies "Harmonie" and "Sorgenfrei" on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 20, he was executed for the crime of wishing to live in freedom. 

A memorial column in memory of Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.  

Memorial Column for Chris Gueffroy

The process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas, nonviolent resistance, and international solidarity. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped, but others paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past."

Thirty four years have passed, and the words of the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel remain relevant for our times, and in defiance of the inhumanity represented by the Berlin Wall. In 2003, he addressed a gathering at Florida International University that was prescient.

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape, and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

The legacy of the Berlin Wall reverberates strongly among Cubans because, since 1959, the Florida Straits have been turned into a killing zone by the communist regime in Cuba, along with the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base.  

Finally, let us denounce the watery Berlin Wall in the Florida Straights created by the Castro regime that continues to kill Cubans seeking freedom. Less than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 13, 1994, thirty-seven Cubans were massacred for trying to flee Cuba. The most recent massacre in Cuba occurred a little over a year ago, on October 28, 2022, killing seven Cubans, including a two-year-old.

 

However, we must commemorate the tremendous days of liberation that took place in the heart of Europe in 1989, the winds of change that emancipated tens of millions of people, and the fact that these free societies are still flourishing in freedom after 34 years.

While honoring and remembering tonight the events and heroes of November 9, 1989, I will also remember the struggle for liberty and justice never ends. 

Demanding freedom for artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez on International Artist Day

 

International Artist Day was launched 19 years ago in 2004 "to honor the contribution artists make to society."

Amnesty International chose to spotlight the situation of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez, two Cuban prisoners of conscience who are also artists, this year.  The posts were made in Spanish and French.

 Here is the English translation of their post demanding freedom.

#Cuba: We demand freedom for artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez, also known as “Maykel Osorbo”, prisoners of conscience of the government of Miguel Diaz-Canel. Raise your voice for a Cuba without repression and without censorship. #FreeArtists #InternationalArtistsDay

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested when he tried to go out and join nonviolent protesters on July 11, 2021. On July 10, 2023 in the Miami Herald, a letter of his was published as an opinion piece titled 'Cuba’s Authorities Have Stolen My Youth Just For Speaking My Mind’ in which he describes the prison conditions he is enduring.

"I’m imprisoned in Guanajay, a maximum-security penitentiary southwest of Havana. Many of my fellow prisoners are serving life sentences for murder. The authorities have separated me from other political prisoners. I share a cell with three others. I’m allowed to talk to other inmates in the hallway, but I’m only taken out to the yard when other prisoners are gone. I should be allowed to spend an hour outside every day, but I’m only let out occasionally at the whim of the guards.  I’ve lost weight because of the scarcity of food and poor quality of meals. I’m often afraid to eat because the food looks rotten. After I was sentenced in June 2022, the rules for visiting me changed. Now my family can only visit me once a month, instead of twice. No one else is allowed. Even my beloved uncle is banned because of his involvement in activism."

Following bios were taken from Amnesty International, and adapted to the present day.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is an artist and member of the San Isidro Movement, a group that mobilized initially in opposition to a law which stands to censor artists. He was detained on 11 July around 3pm in Havana, after posting a video saying he would join the protests. It is believed he is being held at Guanajay prison, but the charges against him are unclear. Amnesty International has named him a prisoner of conscience on three prior occasions.   

Maykel Castillo Pérez,known by his stage name Maykel Osorbo, is a Cuban musician and human rights activist. He is one of the authors of “Patria y Vida”, a song critical of the Cuban government that has been adopted as a protest anthem. On 4 April 2021, Maykel was walking in Havana when police officers questioned him and attempted to arrest him but desisted in the face of complaints from other passersby who considered the action unjust. On May 18, 2021, security agents arrived at his home and arrested him. He was held at the Pinar del Río Provincial Prison under charges of “assault”, “resistance”, “evasion of prisoners and detainees” and “public disorder.”

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez were sentenced to five and nine years in prison respectively by the Castro regime on June 24, 2022. They are currently serving out their unjust prison sentences.

Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara 

Cuba's Queen of Salsa Celia Cruz was born 98 years ago today in Havana but the Castro regime still bans her music

 "Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain." - Celia Cruz  

Celia Cruz 1925 - 2003

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born 98 years ago today in Havana, Cuba, but she was better known as Celia Cruz. She played in Cuba for twelve years from 1948 until 1960. Because she wanted to play her music around the world, she was banned by the Castro regime from returning to the island.

 

Celia was not able to return to Cuba when her father died there in 1961, and she was not allowed to return to Cuba when her mother became ill, or at attend her funeral when her mom died in 1962.

Celia Cobo of Billboard Magazine observed that "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban music." The impact of the Castro regime on music in Cuba goes beyond jailing musicians and includes systematic censorship that threatens the island's musical legacy as has been the case with the Queen of Salsa.

Google Doodle of Celia Cruz from 2013

She is recognized around the world as an icon of music and in 2013 Google honored Celia on the 88th anniversary of her birth with a Google Doodle. In 2010 the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp in her honor describing the Cuban artist as follows.

"A dazzling performer of many genres of Afro-Caribbean music, Celia Cruz (1925-2003) had a powerful contralto voice and a joyful, charismatic personality that endeared her to fans from different nationalities and across generations. Settling in the United States following the Cuban revolution, the “Queen of Salsa” performed for more than five decades and recorded more than 50 albums."  

 Next year the United States Mint will be featured on the reverse side of the U.S. quarter as one of the honorees for the American Women Quarters Program.

However in Cuba the Castro regime continues to ban the music of Celia Cruz from the radio airwaves. She is not alone. There are other banned Cuban musicians of great importance. According to Shoot the singer!: music censorship today, a book edited by Marie Korpe states that there is increasing concern within the international music community that post-revolution generations are growing up without knowing or hearing these censored musicians and that this could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations.

The phrase cultural genocide is used to describe the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s that blacklisted and censored scores of Cuban musicians and artists.

The above censorship is widely known, but not as well known is that the way Celia Cruz was blocked by Fidel Castro from returning to Cuba to say goodbye to her parents, still goes on today in Cuba with members of the diaspora barred arbitrarily from seeing their loved ones by the Castro regime.

Celia Cruz: The Queen of Salsa

The Queen of Salsa passed away twenty years go on July 16, 2003 and her music is still banned in Cuba today.  At the time of her death the Associated Press reported:

"While the death of salsa singer Celia Cruz was reported prominently in newspapers across the world, the news got scant and somewhat bitter treatment Thursday in the official media of her homeland. The Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Cruz’s death in a tiny, two-paragraph story published low on page 6 of the eight-page edition."

On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that the Cuban regime's ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and two days later the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news.  The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio. 

Let Celia Cruz's music be heard in Cuba

This wasn't news but a rumor that nine years after her death her music would be played on Cuban radio, after a half century absence but they were dispelled by regime officials. On August 21, 2012 Tony Pinelli, a musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned.

Sharing the music of Celia Cruz in Cuba is a counter-revolutionary act according to the Castro regime and is an act of subversion against the communist dictatorship. Please share her music widely because it is the sound of freedom. This is why Cuba's tyrants hate her and her music so much, even in death.

Viva Celia Cruz! Azucar!

Conversation between journalist Bret Stephens and Margaret Hoover on October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks against Israel, and the international reaction on Firing Line

"My definition of terrorism is the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, maiming, and menacing of innocents, of civilians, for political goals." ...  "Those who fight with terroristic means end up being masters of terrorist states."  - Benjamin Netanyahu, Firing Line (May 30,1986)

..."It describes so many other post-colonial states that came into existence from people who described themselves as freedom fighters, but used terroristic means and then ended up creating despotisms in their own societies. Its not unique to the Palestinians." - Bret Stephens, Firing Line (October 13, 2023)

This is the third blog entry on the unfolding events in Israel, and the international reaction to the Hamas terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis provides a profound reflection by journalist Bret Stephens on the October 13, 2023 episode of Firing Line with Margaret Hoover. It is required viewing, and available here.

The other entries raise different concerns, and are complementary to this one.

The first entry, a fact sheet was posted on October 11, 2023 which documents that the Jewish people are both the indigenous and ancestral people of the land they currently live in known as Israel. 

The second entry raised an important question: "Why are US taxpayer dollars going to UNESCO to advance the ideology of Ernesto "Che" Guevara that inspire Hamas terrorists?" It also offered evidence, and links substantiating them.

A fourth, and related blog entry was posted on the eve of the October 7th attacks on the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack against Israel by Muslim states, North Korea, ad Cuba.