Remembering Havel: An Unfinished Dialogue Between Oswaldo Payá and Václav Havel

"A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action." - Vaclav Havel

 Václav Havel 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011

Five years ago on December 18, 2011 Vaclav Havel passed away but his legacy and memory live on today with activities commemorating his life. Charter 77 the document that initiated a call for change in 1977 still reverberates in Czech society today. Prague's Archbishop Cardinal Dominik Duka celebrated a requiem mass for Havel in St Vitus Cathedral on fifth anniversary of his passing. Streets are still being named after the late Czech dissident. Forum 2000 is a living legacy that gathers together politicians, artists and intellectuals to focus on particular problems threatening the world today and seeking solutions. There is also a tradition that celebrates Vaclav Havel's humor and sense of the absurd called the "Short Trousers for Vaclav Havel" initiative. 

 Havel is held in high esteem by free Cubans everywhere who remember his message to the Cuban people and his unfinished dialogue with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. Earlier this month the FIU’s Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy unveiled a documentary that featured this friendship.