January 30, 2012
By Aung San Suu Kyi
When I decided that the first Letter from Burma of 2012
should be about the late Vaclav Havel, I wondered how I should entitle the
article. My thoughts immediately went to the little red heart he usually drew
as part of his signature. Perhaps I should write about him as "The Heart
President" or "The Heart Leader" or "The Dissident with A
Heart" or "The Intellectual with A Heart?" In the end I decided
that the name Vaclav Havel alone was more potent and meaningful than any fancy
title I could think up.
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| Photo: Vaclav Havel (internet) |
It was during the first year of my house arrest, 1989, that
the name of Vaclav Havel became familiar to me. The Velvet Revolution, the
Civic Forum, the electoral victory that turned the premier dissident of
Czechoslovakia into the first President of the newly democratic republic: I
learnt about it all from my small portable radio and shared in the euphoria of
political transformation in that far off land. However, I did not realize at
that time that Vaclav Havel would become a personal friend.
