20 December 2011
Opening the plenary, Mrs Irena Degutienë, Speaker of Seimas, reminded that two days ago, on Sunday morning, the Czech Republic, the whole Europe and the entire world lost an important person ––dissident, playwright, and politician –– Václav Havel.
“Václav Havel has always been an exceptional figure Lithuanians could closely relate to. The things he said as a playwright, dissident, head of state, and simply a man about freedom, truth, human rights, rights of a nation, and the need to resist oppression, usually referred to the Czech nation, but all the people of good will in Eastern and Central Europe, including Lithuania, fully understood and accepted these words into the fold of their wide open hearts,” Mrs Degutienë said.
The Seimas Speaker underscored that many people who in one or another way participated and lived through the transformation of Lithuania and the whole Central Europe, saw Václav Havel as the symbol of the fight for freedom in the second half of the 20th century.
“Václav Havel called Lithuania as a country which had to fight, tougher than any other, for its national independence and cultural identity. Lithuania lost its true friend who helped us at the hardest moments in our most recent history – at the moments of the fight for freedom and statehood,” Mrs Degutienë said.
Honouring the blessed memory of Václav Havel, the Seimas Speaker cited one of Havel’s ideas proving why he was titled the Global Conscience Ambassador.
“We will serve best this world if we simply act listening to our voice of conscience, that is, the way how, in our view, each should act.”
The Seimas paid tribute to Václav Havel by a minute of silence.
Secretariat of the Speaker of the Seimas
