Havel calls for boycott on tourism

by Prague Daily Monitor

Former Czech president Vaclav 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.

"I cannot go to Cuba to relax on the beach and keep my eyes shut, while dozens of political prisoners are behind bars there," said Havel, who spent a total of five years in Czech communist prisons as a regime opponent.

In Warsaw, Havel also recalled a story from his dissident years when he was taken to the dentist’s in handcuffs, but other patients in the surgery pretended they did not care.

"We cannot pretend that nothing wrong happens in Cuba. A lot of evil occurs there," Havel added.

The AFP news agency also reported that Havel has had himself voluntarily shot in prison’s clothes among other prisoners one of whom was eating banana as an allusion to the fact that bananas were exported from Cuba to communist countries, including then Czechoslovakia, in the past.

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