13th annual International Conference in Honour of the
Laureate of the 2025 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize 

The program will be held in Czech and English (Panel II also in Spanish) with simultaneous translation.

14.00 Excerpt from a work by Václav Havel (official start of the conference)
– a tribute to the once imprisoned artist Václav Havel: a fragment of a mime piece entitled Perpetuum mobile, performed by mime, actor and director Vojtěch Svoboda. Václav Havel wrote the mime libretto Perpetuum mobile, aneb 7 Dní Pana A (Perpetuum Mobile, or 7 Days of Mr. A) while in custody in spring 1989. Despite its silent, absurd grotesque stylisation, the piece reflects authentic aspects of prison life as well as following, in a heightened style, a cycle of hope and despair in the actions of an innocent prisoner 

14.15 Welcome 
Sasha Michailidis, conference moderator, journalist, Czech TV presenter 
Tribute to past recipients of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize (since 2013)  
A short performance by Belarusian flautist Janina Hora dedicated to two artists and VH Human Rights Prize laureates: Maryia Kalesnikava, music teacher and flautist, leading figure of the opposition in Belarus, imprisoned since 2020; and Belarusian writer Ales Bialiatski, who has faced arrest on numerous occasions and has been imprisoned since 2021 

14.25 Conference opening
Tomáš Sedláček, director of the Václav Havel Library
Jolana Voldánová, director of the Charta 77 Foundation 

14.35 Opening speech 

Jan Lipavský, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 

14.45 Conference keynote: 
Sasha Filipenko, Belarusian writer and journalist  

15.20 Panel I:
Discussion with 2025 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize finalists 
Chair: Sasha Michailidis 

15.50 Coffee break 

16.10 Screening of the short film His Fault produced by the Václav Havel Library  
One cell, six political prisoners. The theme of His Fault is their communication, or rather communication among people as such. Xiboj, a new arrival, had a cigarette in the morning. However, it is forbidden to smoke before breakfast and the King, who is boss of the cell, is trying to explain the rules to him. When Xiboj shows no signs of reacting to even the toughest threats, one of the inmates makes a guess: "Guys, come on, he's a Hungarian or something..." Director: Jan Prušinovský, script: Václav Havel, cast: Zdeněk Godla, Petr Uhlík, Milan Škop, Martin Peroutka, Ladislav Červeňák 
The film was made for the Czech educational program Read Havel 

16.15 Panel II:
Art against dictatorship  
The search for ways to resist authoritarian control illustrates the enduring human desire for freedom and democracy. Artistic and cultural expressions can be powerful forms of subtle resistance. But it doesn't even have to be artistic expression that provokes a tyrannical regime—sometimes it's the everyday civic expression of artists who influence public opinion. What role do artists play in an authoritarian or totalitarian regime? Art as political protest? Can artists make a difference? 
Aleksandra Skochilenko, Russian artist, musician, poet and former political prisoner, living in exile 
Samantha Jirón, Nicaraguan journalist and visual artist, former political prisoner of Ortega's dictatorship, living in exile 
Jamal Ali, Azerbaijani rapper, rocker, activist, and journalist former political prisoner, living in exile 
Moderated by: Sasha Michailidis 

17.50 Coffee Break

18.15 – 18.45 
Program in the main ground-floor space:
musical performances by Aleksandra Skochilenko and Jamal Ali 

Samantha Padilla Jirón is a Nicaraguan journalist and visual artist and was a political prisoner under the Ortega dictatorship. She studied drawing and painting from 2009 to 2014 with a non-profit organisation focused on the occupational and psychosocial training of young people, while in 2019 she presented an exhibition of paintings on the socio-political crisis in Nicaragua. In 2014 she joined the Benemérito Corps of Masaya as a volunteer fire-fighter and in 2017 served at the General Directorate of Fire-fighters, where she volunteered for some years until civic protests broke out and fire-fighters were ordered by the dictatorship not to attend the wounded during 2018 anti-government protests. In 2018 she decided to join anti-government protests in Masaya and Granada. As a result of this she was forced in July 2018 to go into exile in Costa Rica, where she began to organise groups of young people and students, with whom she began to engage in activism and human rights work. She became the youngest columnist in the opinion section of the newspaper La Prensa of Nicaragua and has published opinion pieces in La Prensa, Divergentes, Intertextual and El País, among others. In 2020 she decided to return to Nicaragua, where she continued to be persecuted by Sandinista supporters and was subject to police harassment. On November 7, 2021 Samantha denounced ongoing presidential elections as fraudulent and urged Nicaraguans not to vote; two days later she was kidnapped by paramilitaries in the vicinity of UCA University. She became the youngest female political prisoner of the regime. On February 9, 2023 she was sent on a plane to the United States along with 221 other political prisoners. While they were still in the air, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo stripped them of their Nicaraguan nationality, rendering them stateless. Samantha is currently a scholarship student undertaking a degree in journalism at Complutense University of Madrid and has become a Spanish citizen. 

Jamal Ali is a Berlin-based Azerbaijani musician, satirist and journalist whose work blends protest with performance. He fronts Gimme the Juice, an Afrobeat band mixing global grooves with political edge, and co-founded Insane, a spiky comic magazine taking aim at authoritarianism. Exiled for a satirical song about the president, he has since helped build independent media for Azerbaijan and its diaspora. Through music, comics, and storytelling, he gives voice to the silenced: pushing back, speaking out and sparking dialogue across borders. 

Alexandra Kusá is a Slovak art historian and curator. She studied art history at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, where she also completed her doctoral studies. From 2008 to 2009 she worked as head of the collections department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno. From 2000 she worked at the Slovak National Gallery in various positions related to 20th century art. In 2010 she became director general of the Slovak National Gallery, a post she held until August 2024, when she was dismissed by Minister Martina Šimkovičová. Her work as an art historian is focused on 20th century art, in particular socialist realism. She has also written two books on Stalinist culture in Czechoslovakia and prepared a number of exhibitions. 

Janina Aliakhnovich Hora is a flautist and educator originally from Belarus who has now been based in Prague for many years. She completed her Bachelor's and Master's studies at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (AMU), where she focused on both the classical and contemporary repertoire. During her studies, she took part in performance courses in Poland, Austria and Luxembourg, studying under leading European flautists. She performs in projects such as Orchestr BERG and Ensemble Terrible, and has collaborated with a number of Czech symphony orchestras. In addition to her concert activities, she teaches western concert flute and recorder at an elementary art school. 

Vojtěch Svoboda is a mime, actor and director. He graduated from the Department of Mime and Nonverbal Theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Die Etage Theatre School in Berlin. He performs in the genres of mime, non-verbal theatre, drama, clownery, commedia dell'arte, dance, opera, physical theatre and puppet theatre. Since 2023 he has been a permanent guest at the theatre Divadlo Bravo in Prague. He founded the ensemble Kozel ve fraku, which explores modern mime and non-verbal theatre, is co-founder and stage director of the ensemble Opera Studio Prague, and guest appears at the State Opera, the National Theatre in Prague and the theatre Divadlo Bez zábradlí, as well as with the Sacra Cirkus and Teatro Comico companies. As a teacher he cooperates with the Prague Conservatory, helming theatre courses. His directing credits include The Master and Margarita at Divadlo Inspirace, Never Alone at Divadlo Na Rejdišti, and the operas Anne, Look at the Sky Without Fear and Timepiece. As a solo performer, he has undertaken the only mime written by Václav Havel: Perpetuum mobile. He has also performed in Japan, the USA, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, Armenia and the Philippines. 

Saša Michailidis is a presenter and manager in the fields of culture and media. He hosts the shows ArtZóna on ČTArt, Czech Television’s dedicated arts channel, and Akcent on Czech Radio’s Vltava station. He works for the HBO (Max) streaming service as an acquisition manager and collaborates with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In the past he was the director and program director of the Prague station Radio 1. 

Tomáš Brolík works as a deputy editor-in-chief in Respekt magazine. He started working for Respekt at the end of 2012. He contributes to the Focus section, where he writes mostly about politics, economics, and occasionally environment. He focuses on the region of Central Europe. He was awarded the “Novinářská křepelka” prize for journalism in 2014.