His Holiness the Dalai Lama, President Václav Havel and Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will address a "Democracy and Human Rights in Asia: One Year After an Empty Chair in Oslo" roundtable conference in Prague on 11 December. His Holiness the Dalai Lama will arrive in Prague on 10 December.

    The roundtable conference will commemorate the first anniversary of Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The conference will focus on the current state of democracy and human rights in Asia. Nobel Laureate   Dr. Shirin Ebadi, Mr. Stéphane Hessel, Diplomat, Co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Dr. Jianli Yang Dissident, President and Founder, Initiatives for China based in Boston, USA will also address the conference.“Human rights are universal. China, Myanmar (Burma) and other Asian countries are members of the United Nations and are therefore bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Forum2000 the organisers of the roundtable. “In fact, one of the declaration’s authors, Peng Chun Chang from China, based many of the declaration’s principles on Confucian and other Eastern teachings. Nonetheless, the human rights situation in parts of the region is a cause for grave concern. The empty chair at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony remains a sad symbol of this.” The conference will be held at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Forum 2000 Foundation also organised Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia conference in September 2009. On Sunday afternoon His Holiness the Dalai Lama will give a public talk on Searching for Happiness in a Troubled World. The talk will be held at the Prague Congress Centre and the tickets were sold out in one day.

The roundtable conference and the public talk will be live broadcasted on http://www.forum2000.cz/en/web-tv/

His Holiness the Dalai Lama first visited Prague at the official invitation of President Havel soon after the Velvet Revolution in January 1990. President Havel became the first President after the communist rule. This will be His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 9th visit to the Czech Republic.