Former Foreign Minister and Czech Presidential Candidate Prince Karel Schwarzenberg Has Died
- 12.11.2023, 14:45
The politician harshly criticized the Lukashenka regime and was awarded the BDR medal.
The former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic (2007-2009, 2010-2013) and honorary chairman of the liberal-conservative TOP 09 party, Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, has died.
Czech media reported this on November 12.
The famous Czech politician, who also visited Belarus, was 85 years old. Karel Schwarzenberg supported the democratic forces of Belarus and consistently criticized the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka.
Echo24 news publisher, citing a source in the Schwarzenberg family, writes that for the last two days, the politician had serious health issues and was put into an artificial deep sleep.
Schwarzenberg was hospitalized many times due to unspecified health problems. But he spoke to journalists while in a hospital - last week he commented on the verdict against Dominik Feri, the former MP from the TOP 09 political party.
On October 28, Schwarzenberg did not participate in the ceremony of presenting state awards, when the country's President Petr Pavel awarded him the Order of the White Lion. His son Jan took the order for him.
Schwarzenberg, known in political and social circles as the Prince, was born in Prague in 1937. He spent his childhood in South Bohemia. After the communist takeover in 1948, his family’s property was sequestered, classifying the family as an “undesirable aristocracy,” and the Schwarzenberg family took refuge in neighbouring Austria.
Schwarzenberg did not forget his homeland even in the whirlpool of Vienna's social life. He founded the Czechoslovak Documentation Center in one of his castles. It was an archive of literature banned at that time. In 1984, he became chairman of the International Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and was involved in supporting Czechoslovak dissidents.
After 1989, he sided with the leader of the Velvet Revolution, Václav Havel, with whom he already had a long-standing friendship at that time. In the summer of 1990, he became Havel's chancellor.
Since 1996, Schwarzenberg has published the influential political weekly Respekt.
The peak of Karel Schwarzenberg's political career came in 2013, when he faced Miloš Zeman in the presidential elections. In 2015, the victorious Zeman said that “there is a civil war in Ukraine,” and this caused sharp criticism, including from Schwarzenberg, who called it Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Karel Schwarzenberg supported the democratic forces in Belarus, consistently criticized the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka and opposed the death penalty. In the fall of 2014, he visited Belarus. He believed that Europe should have lifted sanctions from official Minsk only after introducing a moratorium on the death penalty.
In 2018, Karel Schwarzenberg criticized the idea of building a restaurant in Kurapaty near Minsk. He recalled in an interview with Radio Liberty a story from the Czech Republic, where there was a similar case. Communists built a pig farm near a World War II Roma and Sinti concentration camp in southern Bohemia in the 1970s. This provoked protests, but the situation was not resolved for many years. Finally, the government bought the pigsty from the owner and decided to demolish the complex and erect a monument.
In 2018, Schwarzenberg was awarded a medal for the 100th anniversary of the Belarusian Democratic Republic (BDR) - “in recognition of his services in strengthening Belarusian independence and democracy.”