BBC News - World pays tribute to Czech statesman Vaclav Havel

Excerpts: [[Born in 1936 to a wealthy family in Czechoslovakia

Considered "too bourgeois" by communist government, studied at night school

Writing banned and plays forced underground after the 1968 Prague Spring

In 1977, co-authored the Charter 77 movement for democratic change

Faced constant harassment and imprisonment as Czechoslovakia's most famous dissident

Czechoslovakia's first post-communist president in December 1989

Oversaw transition to democracy, and 1993 division into the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Left office in 2003 and continued writing, publishing a new play in 2008 and directing first film in 2011]]