Defending Human Rights: The Havel Example
By Aurel Braun and David Matas
Those who defend human rights
victims in repressive states run the risk of becoming victims themselves. One reason we should stand up in Canada for
human rights abroad is that we are safe in doing this. Human rights defenders in repressive states
are not.
In spite of those risks, there
are people of extraordinary courage and unrelenting commitment even in the most
repressive states who at great personal risk to themselves and their families,
respect human rights, call for others to do so and decry violations. These human rights defenders give us yet
another reason to raise our voices. If
they can risk so much, we who have nothing to lose should do our part.
Nelson Mandela in the days of
apartheid South Africa, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and Gao Zhisheng in China are
shining examples to all of us. So was
Vaclav Havel.
Havel, who passed away on
December 18 th , was one of the world's most inspiring and effective
dissidents. He never gave up, even in the bleakest and most dangerous moments;
through his courage and insight, he came to symbolize the nobility of the
struggle for human rights.
His personal history is
emblematic of the decades -'long struggle against the murderous totalitarianism
that Communism embodied in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; his persistence
should inspire fighters for human rights everywhere. Havel, a playwright and
essayist who successfully transitioned from persecuted dissident to admired
statesman, melded the philosophical and the pragmatic drive for human rights.
He understood the power of principles and ideas.
Havel was one of the co -'writers
of Charter 77, which in 1977 challenged the totalitarian Czechoslovak
government to abide by the 1975 Helsinki Accords that had stipulated the
protection of human rights. Fewer than 300 people signed the Charter, and the
reaction of the Prague regime was to imprison many of the signatories,
including Havel. He never retracted, he never stopped advocating, and repeated
imprisonment never deterred him. This admirable courage certainly deserves
recognition, but there was considerably more to Havel and his work than that.
Havel also had an extraordinary
sense of the perniciousness and the unreformability of totalitarian rule. In
1968, Havel refused to be seduced by the supposed prospects of creating a
Communism 'with a human face' which Alexander Dubcek advocated, and which so many
in the West applauded. He similarly later rejected Mikhail Gorbachev's failed
attempts at a similar reform and rescue of Communism in the Soviet Union. Havel
understood that totalitarianism is an integrated political order that, at its
heart, is criminal, corrupt, unreformable, and irredeemable. He therefore
challenged not only the totalitarian rulers, but also naà ¯ve and misguided
reformers who thought that fine -'tuning the system, or for those on the outside,
constructively engaging with it, would somehow protect basic human rights.
Havel appreciated that there could be no compromise with totalitarianism, and
those who advocated that were foolish and, unwittingly, dangerous pawns. In
1989, when the Czechoslovak people finally had an opportunity to choose freely,
they rejected whole scale the options of 'reform Communism' or 'socialism with
a human face' in favour of democracy as the only way to truly protect human
rights. Havel became their President,
and protection of true human rights and promotion of democracy remained his
central goals.
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