Havel denies call for boycott of tourism in Cuba
Prague- Former president Vaclav Havel today denied the information that
he had called for boycott of tourism in Cuba, Havel's secretary Jakub
Hladik said.
The French news agency AFP said earlier this week that Havel called on
people to boycott tourist trips to Cuba in a video recording presented
at a conference held by Lech Walesa, former Polish president and a Nobel
Peace Prize winner, in Warsaw today.
Hladik said that the video recording was 18 months old. "However, Havel
does not call for the boycott of trips to Cuba in it. He wants the
public to realise the local political situation, which may not be always
apparent from the suites of luxurious hotels," Hladik said in a press
release.
The video recording was first published on March 18, 2005, on the day of
two-year anniversary of mass detentions in Cuba. It was made at a
protest meeting held by the Czech NGO People in Need at Prague's
Wenceslas Square, Hladik said.
"It was used in Warsaw as it still relates to the current situation in
Cuba," Hladík said.
"Wrong things are going on in Cuba and whoever goes there should bear
them in mind, should realise them and not pretend that he does not know
in which country he finds himself," Havel said in the video recording,
available at www.vaclavhavel.cz.
Havel also said that "we cannot travel to the beaches in Cuba,
sunbathing, enjoying ourselves, having a good drink, not knowing what is
going on around us," Havel said.
"It is a country with the rule of fear, with political prisoners sent to
jail only because they voiced their opinion. As we, too, experienced a
totalitarian system, we should be open and particularly sensitive to
this," Havel said.
Havel, 70, former dissident and playwright, occupied the post of
Czechoslovak President after the collapse of Communism from December
1989 to 1992, and after Czechoslovakia's split in 1993 he became Czech
President (in office 1993-2003).
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=225536
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