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Václav Havel Memorial Day
“Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.”
~ Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)
According to the designer, anyone who believes that free expression is an essential component of every healthy society is welcome to wear or display the Havel tartan.
The tartan itself portrays an endless succession of prison cell windows, each struck through in red, symbolizing a protest against the persecution and imprisonment of writers of conscience. Its design is rooted in the conviction that freedom of expression is indispensable to the life of a community.
The tartan is named in honour of Václav Havel, the dissident playwright and co-author of Charter 77, a landmark human rights declaration. For his role in drafting and promoting it, Havel was imprisoned for several years, yet he later emerged to lead the Velvet Revolution, which peacefully overthrew communism and brought him to the presidency of Czechoslovakia.
Permission to adopt the Havel name was graciously granted by his wife, Dagmar Havlová Veškrnová, with support from the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation and PEN International—the worldwide writers’ association dedicated to promoting literature and defending freedom of expression. ❤️ 🤍 🖤 💬 💬 💬 🗨️ 🗨️ 🗨️ 👁️🗨️ 👁️🗨️ 👁️🗨️ ✍️
Václav Havel October 1936 – December 2011) was a Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, who served as the last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the Fall of Communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs. With educational opportunities curtailed by his bourgeois background, at a time when such freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives, including Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the StB secret police, and he spent multiple periods as a political prisoner, the longest of his imprisoned terms being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983.
For more on Vaclav Havel, click his portrait.