Václav Havel

Václav Havel was a Czech playwright whose plays were banned under communist rule. In January 1977 he became a spokesman for Charter 77, a manifesto that asked the Czechoslovak government to respect the human rights it had signed up to, and was imprisoned for about five months. In May 1979 the State Security arrested him with other members of a committee defending the unjustly prosecuted, on charges of subversion. In October 1979 he received four and a half years in prison. He was released in February 1983 because of pneumonia.

He was arrested again in January 1989 during demonstrations marking the anniversary of Jan Palach's self immolation and sentenced to nine months. That November, the Velvet Revolution brought down the regime. On 29 December 1989 the Federal Parliament elected him President of Czechoslovakia, the same man who had been in prison months earlier. He served as president until 1992, then as the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.