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Havel to return German award if Putin receives it

Vladimír Putin

  12:09

Václav Havel has in the past accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of forming ‘a new type of dictatorship’ comprised of KGB and mafiosi

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin foto: ORCOČeská pozice

Former Czech president Václav Havel has said he will consider returning a prestigious German prize for civic courage, the Quadriga award, if the Berlin-based group goes ahead with plans to award it to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, both German and Czech media reported Saturday.

Putin is set to receive the prize in October for his contribution to Russia’s “stability through the interaction between prosperity, economics and identity,” as well as to fostering German-Russian ties. His critics, meanwhile, acuse him of waging war on Russia’s civil society that emerged from the glasnost era.

A spokesperson for Havel was quoted as saying the former president was seriously considering returning the Quadriga prize — as is fellow past Czech recipient Šimon Pánek of the humanitarian organization People in Need (PIN). “I definitely do not want to be seen in a group with Putin,” Pánek said, as cited by Lidové noviny. The daily reported Saturday that the two men will likely write an open letter to Quadriga board as a first step, urging them to reconsider.

Another recipient of the German prize, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, has reportedly already returned it in protest.

The annual Quadriga award is sponsored by Netzwerk Quadriga gGmbH, a non-profit organization based in Berlin. A number of Quadriga board members, including Cem Ozdemir, a co-chair of the German opposition Green party, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stepped down from the board to protest the decision.

Apart from Havel, previous winners of the Quadriga award include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and two former German chancellors, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder. “The Quadriga should go to people who have done a service to promoting democracy,” Ozdemir said in a statement. “I do not see Vladimir Putin among those ranks.” ‘It is downright cynical to award Putin the Quadriga prize and put him in the same group with Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel. It devalues the prize.’

The award, a small statue of the Quadriga (a chariot pulled by four horses) on top of the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, is to be bestowed upon Putin on October 3, the Day of German Unity. It has been given since 2003 to outstanding personalities of politics, economy and culture, possessing the “spirit of the pioneer” and a desire for “public good.”

“It is downright cynical to award Putin the Quadriga prize and put him in the same group with Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel. It devalues the prize,” the German government’s human rights commissioner, Markus Loening, a member of the Free Democrats who rule with Merkel’s conservatives, told Der Spiegel magazine’s online edition, Reuters reported.

‘KGB and mafiosi’

Václav Havel, known worldwide as a promoter of human rights and civil society, is an outspoken critic of Putin. In 2005 he sent a letter to then-President Putin, a former KGB officer in East Germany in the 1980s, urging him to improve the state of human rights in Russia.

“The era of president Putin brought a new type of dictatorship, dangerous in its inconspicuous fashion,” Havel said in a 2008 interview with Czech daily Lidové noviny. “A grouping, simply said, of KGB types and mafiosi has ascended to power.”

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