SERBIA: NATASA KANDIC

 

NATASA KANDIC (b. 1946)

Nataša Kandić is a Serbian human rights activist and coordinator of the RECOM Reconciliation Network, founder and ex-executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), an organization campaigning for human rights and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia, focusing on the Serbian role in the conflict. Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) was formed in 1992.

Natasha Kandic was born in 1946 in Kragujevac, in Yugoslavia (now Serbia). After finishing her studies in Sociology, she became a dissident under Tito and a human rights activist after his death.

Natasha Kandic is considered the Simon Wiesenthal of the Balkans because she has systematically investigated the crimes committed during the war that followed the 1992 break-up of Yugoslavia, thereby enabling the Serbs responsible to be brought to justice.

She was won numerous international awards and in 2003 she was defined a “European hero” by Time Magazine and in 2005 she was declared honorary citizen of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In Serbia she is considered persona non grata in large areas of the country. She lives under constant threat of death from extremists of the various ethnic factions. She was beaten up in the Square of the Republic in Belgrade without a single passer-by coming to her aid. At a conference at the university she risked being lynched.

Natasa Kandić is a recipient of more than 20 international, regional and national human rights awards. In 2000 she won the The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, awarded jointly by Amnesty International, Diakonia, Human Rights Watch, HURIDOCS, International Alert, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Service for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Torture, granted annually to an individual or an organization who has displayed exceptional courage in combating human rights violations.

In 2018, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

(https://en.gariwo.net/righteous/the-righteous-biographies/civil-courage/exemplary-figures-reported-by-gariwo/natasha-kandic-7590.html)