DHARAMSHALA, August 27: Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will be seen together at a Human Rights Forum in Prague next month. The two Nobel Laureates met for the first time in London at Suu Kyi’s 67th birthday last year.
Filip Sebek, spokesman of the forum said that the two Nobel laureates are scheduled to speak during the forum, however no official meeting between the two has been scheduled. He did not however rule out the possibility of a private meeting between the two, a meeting that is likely to anger China, a powerful ally of Myanmar and major investor in the resource-rich nation.
Themed “societies in transition”, the forum will also be attended by US folk singer and activist Joan Baez and South Africa’s last white president Frederik Willem de Klerk, also a Nobel laureate.
The Human Rights Forum was started by the late Czech President and Velvet Revolution icon Vaclav Havel and American Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in 1997.
Executive Director Jakub Klepal said, “The aim is to better understand what is needed during the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy but also to better understand the things that cause these processes to grind to a halt or lose their way”.
Suu Kyi was jailed in 1990, soon after leading her pro-democracy party to victory and spent much of the past 24 years under house arrest. The Dalai Lama had often in the past campaigned for Suu Kyi’s release with other fellow Nobel laureates.
