World leaders bid farewell to Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel

PRAGUE, (Reuters) – International leaders bade  farewell yesterday to former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the  anti-communist dissident who led the peaceful “Velvet  Revolution” and inspired human rights campaigners around the  world.

Vaclav Havel

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband  former President Bill Clinton, joined leaders from France,  Britain and many ex-communist countries for the funeral mass in  the gothic St. Vitus cathedral at Prague Castle, the seat of  Czech kings and presidents.

Havel, a dissident playwright who died on Sunday at 75 after  a long respiratory illness, served five years in jail for his  criticism of oppressive communist rule before rising to the  presidency of what was then Czechoslovakia in late 1989.

He stepped down as Czech president in 2003 but remained a  symbol of struggle for freedom and human rights, although his  proclamation that “truth and love must win over lies and hatred”  turned bitter to some Czechs amid economic hardship and   corruption in the years after the end of totalitarian rule.

A thousand guests filled the monumental cathedral for the  mass, while thousands more followed the service on large screens  outside.

“He fought against the communists, stuck to his opinion,  made big sacrifices,” said 14-year old Anezka Chroustova, who  brought a bunch of yellow roses.

Havel’s widow, actress Dagmar Havlova, clad in a black  veil, sat in the front row at the mass celebrated by archbishop  Dominik Duka, the head of the Czech Catholic church. Havel’s  casket lay on the floor, covered by a Czech flag.

Sirens and church bells rang around the central  European country at noon in Havel’s memory and many people  stopped on the streets to observe a minute of silence, some  moved to tears. Some factories stopped work.

On Wednesday, over 10,000 mourners had marched through  Prague’s cobblestoned medieval streets, led by his widow, to pay  their respects. Thousands of candles were burning at Prague’s  Wenceslas Square and Narodni Trida, the main spots of the Velvet  Revolution demonstrations.

POPE’S TRIBUTE

“Remembering how courageously Mr Havel defended human rights  at a time when these were systematically denied to the people of  your country, and paying tribute to his visionary leadership…I  give thanks to God for the freedom that the people of the Czech  Republic now enjoy,” Pope Benedict said in a letter read out at  Friday’s mass.

Havel’s dissident friend Lech Walesa, the first  post-communist democratic president of Poland, was among the  guests. Russia, which Havel criticised for human rights abuses  and democratic shortfalls as recently as this month, was  represented by rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

Bill Clinton’s presence was testimony to his close  relationship with Havel, who took him to drink beer in a Prague  pub and play saxophone in a club when he visited in 1994.

Havel developed close ties with the United States and took  the Czech Republic to NATO in 1999 and the European Union in  2004.

“Vaclav Havel was fully aware of human weakness but we  will remember him for his resolve not to accept it as a  permanent state of being,” said Madeleine Albright, a Czech-born  former U.S. secretary of state under Clinton and a friend of  Havel.

The service ended with the Czech national anthem and 21  howitzer gun salvos. The crowd outside the cathedral clapped as  Havel’s coffin was taken away for a private family  memorial.

Havel, whose dramas of the absurd were popular in the 1960s  before he was banned from public life after the Soviet invasion  in 1968, had felt most at home among artists, including the  Rolling Stones who played in Prague in 1990 just a few months  after the revolution.

A rock concert and a festival of his plays was due to take  place later on Friday at the Lucerna Palace that the Havel  family built in the early 20th century. Four thousand tickets to  the event were snapped up in minutes.

The programme includes a show by The Plastic People of  the Universe, a band whose persecution in the 1970s led Havel  and others to form the Charter 77 movement that became the main  opposition platform.