http://www.forum2000.cz/en/projects/forum-2000-conferences/2011/press-releases/forum-2000-will-also-be-attended-by-elie-wiesel--mikheil-saakashvili-and-kosovar-president-atifete-jahjaga/
Forum 2000 Will Also Be Attended by Elie Wiesel, Mikheil Saakashvili and Kosovar President Atifete Jahjaga
To date, 114 delegates have confirmed their attendance at this year’s Forum 2000 Conference. Never before has such a number of important international figures congregated in Prague at the invitation of Václav Havel. “Our ambition is not to break records in terms of the number of delegates,” says Forum 2000’s Executive Director Oldřich Černý. “Nonetheless, we are sometimes upbraided for the fact that conference visitors have no opportunity to hear the opinions of everyone they are interested in during the two days of the conference, because this is not humanly possible due to the quantity of parallel events. That, however, is the price we pay for the prestige that the conference now enjoys both at home and abroad. Thanks to this, few people refuse invitations to the event. In this way, we can offer the interested public, students and perhaps even Czech politicians controversial opinions on contemporary global issues from the mouths of people who are renowned and whose words carry a certain weight in this world. Last year, more than 3,500 people availed of the opportunity to attend the Forum 2000 Conference free-of-charge, and we also expect a similar number of visitors this year.”
As is the case with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, who co-founded the Forum 2000 Foundation with Václav Havel and Yohei Sasakawa, a number of guests have confirmed their participation at the last minute. Besides several former heads of state, the President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and Kosovar President Atifete Jahjaga will also be gracing Prague with their presence. An important part of the conference will comprise panel debates on the state of the rule of law in Russia. In two panel discussions on the role of law in Russia and whether this country is actually capable of adapting to a rapidly changing world, interesting and relevant speakers will be exchanging their opinions. These include the leading representative of the Russian opposition Boris Nemtsov, the Russian economist and politician Grigory Yavlinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s attorney Vadim Klyuvgant.
Delegates who have recently confirmed their attendance at the conference include the American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who is well known as the coordinator of the Stanford prison study, and the Buddhist scholar Geshe Tenzin Dhargye. This year, for the first time, part of the Forum 2000 Conference will also be held outside of Prague. On Wednesday, October 12, a panel debate will be held in the Czech Radio building in Pilsen on “Corruption: How Can We Effectively Deal with It?” This event will be moderated by the editor-in-chief of the Respekt weekly Erik Tabery.
As part of the opening ceremony of the conference at the Prague Crossroads venue (the deconsecrated Church of St. Anne), the singer Marta Töpferová will perform in a unique pairing with Zuzana Lapčíková. Both these vocalists have never performed together before. While the concert on October 9 is only intended for conference participants, a concert will also be held on the following day for the general public at Žofín Palace.
Admission to the conference, whose visual campaign has been prepared by the VCCP agency, is open to the public and free-of-charge upon accreditation. A live broadcast of the working part of the conference can be watched online at www.forum2000.cz.