A son honours the man who stood by his mother – Kim Aris pays tribute to Václav Havel
By Igor Blazevic
On Wednesday morning, October 14, Kim Aris, the son of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, took time out of his busy programme in Prague, where he was attending the 30th Forum 2000 Conference, to visit the grave of the late Czech President Václav Havel.
Kim laid flowers on Havel’s grave and paid tribute to a man who had been one of his mother’s most devoted friends and supporters, and one of the most steadfast international champions of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy.
There is a moving story behind this simple gesture.
Václav Havel and Aung San Suu Kyi shared an extraordinary friendship, although they never met in person.
Their friendship began in 1991, when Havel, who had emerged from decades of resistance to communist dictatorship to become the first president of a democratic Czechoslovakia, nominated Aung San Suu Kyi for the Nobel Peace Prize.
At the time, Havel himself was widely regarded as a deserving candidate for the prize. But he believed that the international recognition would be more valuable to Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma, whose struggle for freedom was far from over.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
But Havel’s solidarity did not end there. For the next two decades, until his death in December 2011, he remained a tireless advocate for her freedom, for Burma’s political prisoners, and for the country’s democratic movement.
He wrote letters, mobilized international support, appealed to world leaders, and repeatedly demanded her release. Every year, he invited Aung San Suu Kyi to attend the Forum 2000 Conference in Prague, even though he knew that, while under house arrest, she would not be allowed to come.
Those invitations were not merely symbolic gestures. They were a way of telling her that she had not been forgotten, that she was not alone, and that her struggle remained the struggle of people who believed in freedom and human dignity around the world.
And she never forgot that friendship.
When Aung San Suu Kyi finally came to Prague in September 2013 and delivered the keynote address at the Forum 2000 Conference, almost two years after Havel’s death, she spoke movingly about what his friendship had meant to her during her long years of isolation.
“When I was under house arrest I knew that here was a man speaking for me. He made me feel free,” she told the audience.
She also recalled how she had first learned about Havel and Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989, listening to a small portable radio while she herself was under house arrest in Rangoon.
She followed with excitement the extraordinary events that transformed a communist dictatorship into a democracy and turned a former political prisoner and dissident into the country’s president.
Little did she know then that this man, thousands of kilometres away, would become one of her closest and most loyal friends.
Their friendship was built not on personal encounters but on shared values, mutual respect, and a profound understanding of what it means to resist dictatorship.
As she beautifully put it: “There are no better friends than those with whom we share the same values.”
There is also a touching story about Havel’s wish to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2005, he wrote that he hoped one day to meet her in person and present her with a rose, like the one she was holding in a photograph he kept in his study.
Sadly, that meeting never happened.
After Havel’s death, his friends remembered his wish. Roses from his coffin were incorporated into a symbolic glass artwork created by the Czech artist Bořek Šípek, which was presented to Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar in 2012.
It was a final, deeply personal gesture of friendship from a man who had never stopped standing by her.
And now, thirteen years after his mother’s visit to Prague, her son Kim Aris has returned to the same city, to the same Forum 2000 Conference, and to the grave of the man who stood by his mother through so many difficult years.
But Myanmar has since suffered another devastating setback in its long struggle for democracy. The democratic opening that once brought so much hope to Myanmar was brutally reversed by the military coup of February 2021.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, now 81 years old, is again imprisoned, completely isolated from her family and the outside world. Her son does not even know exactly where she is being held or what her health condition is.
And the people of Myanmar are once again fighting against military dictatorship, this time through an extraordinary nationwide struggle for liberation and federal democracy.
During his speech at this year’s Forum 2000 Conference, Kim reminded the audience of Havel’s legacy and the continuing importance of international solidarity.
He also spoke about a new generation of Myanmar’s citizens, especially young people, who have taken responsibility for their country’s future, who refuse to surrender the freedoms they once experienced, and who continue to organize, resist, and struggle for a democratic Myanmar.
There is for me something deeply moving in this continuity between generations and across countries.
Havel was not simply a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi. He was a friend of the people of Myanmar. And his solidarity was not based on political convenience or calculations of geopolitical advantage. It came from a deeply held conviction that those who have won their freedom have a responsibility to stand by others who are still fighting for theirs.
That is the legacy that Kim came to honour.
The flowers Kim placed on Havel’s grave were a gesture of gratitude, remembrance, and friendship. But they were also a reminder that the struggle for freedom in Myanmar continues — and that the solidarity Havel embodied is needed today as much as ever.
Photo: Kim Aris laying flowers and paying his respects at the grave of President Václav Havel in Prague, October 14, 2026.
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