• Submitted by: admin
• Politics and Government
• 12 / 12 / 2006

"I cannot go to Cuba to relax on the beach and keep my eyes shut, while dozens of political prisoners are behind bars there," said Havel, who spent a total of five years in Czech communist prisons as a regime opponent.

In Warsaw, Havel also recalled a story from his dissident years when he was taken to the dentist's in handcuffs, but other patients in the surgery pretended they did not care.

"We cannot pretend that nothing wrong happens in Cuba. A lot of evil occurs there," Havel added.

The AFP news agency also reported that Havel has had himself voluntarily shot in prison's clothes among other prisoners one of whom was eating banana as an allusion to the fact that bananas were exported from Cuba to communist countries, including then Czechoslovakia, in the past.

Havel, 70, former dissident and playwright, occupied the post of Czechoslovak President after the collapse of Communism from December 1989 to 1992, and after Czechoslovakia's split in 1993 he became Czech President (in office 1993-2003).