Nataša Kandić
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Nataša Kandić (Serbian Cyrillic: Наташа Кандић) (born 1946 in Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian human rights activist.
Kandić is the executive director of Belgrade's Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) which she formed in 1992, an organisation financed directly by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy[1]. She organized the Candles for Peace campaign in 1991 and the Black Ribbon March in 1992, satirised by the film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame.[2]
[edit] International Awards
Kandić is a recipient of over 20 international, regional and national human rights awards. In 2000 she was a recipient of the Martin Ennals Award, a prestigious recognition for human rights defenders. Nataša Kandić was also listed by Time magazine as one of 36 European heroes in 2003, and again featured as a hero in 2006. In 2004 the People in Need Foundation awarded Kandić and the HLC their Homo Homini Award, presented by Václav Havel. In 2005 she was proclaimed an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, and Slobodna Bosna magazine named her Person of the Year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In September 2006, Kandić became a member of the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Katarina Zrinska, awarded by the President of Croatia to individuals who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of moral values. Her awards have included the following:
- Human Rights Watch Award (1993)
- US and EU Democracy and Civil Society Award (1998)
- Martin Ennals Award (1999)
- Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights Award (1999)
- NED Democracy Award 2000
- Geuzenpenning 2000 Award
- 2000 Roger E. Joseph Prize which is given by Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion
- 2000 Alexander Langer Prize
- 2000 Civil Courage Prize which is given by Northcote Parkinson Fund
- Award for Civil Courage - Nothcote Parkinson foundation, 2001
- European Heroes Award - TIME magazine, 2003
- Honorable Doctorate of the University of Valencia - 2003
- Homo Homini Award - People in Need Foundation - 2004
- Honorary Citizen of Sarajevo (October 4, 2005)
- Person of the Year in Bosnia and Herzegovina - Slobodna Bosna magazine - 2005
- Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Katarina Zrinska - 2006
[edit] Controversy
In her native Serbia, Kandić has remained a highly controversial figure, often accused of ignoring the plight of hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) from the Yugoslav wars, while campaigning energetically for the rights of refugees and war victims of other ethnicities.
Throughout much of Serbia, and other areas populated by Serbs, she has been declared Persona Non Grata, whilst among opponents of the Serbs and other anti-Serb organisations and unsympathetic media, her activities have been used to bolster their propaganda campaigns.
In 2003, she publicly slapped Nikola Popović, an elderly Serbian refugee from Kosovo at Republic Square in Belgrade, at a protest against the lack of information about the many thousands of Kosovo Serbs missing since being driven out by Albanian separatists. After having slapped the elderly refugee, she justified her act of violence by asserting she had to "defend [myself] from Serbian patriotism". She was charged for refusing to obey police, as she refused to leave the protest even when informed by police that they are not able to guarantee her safety and she must leave. [3]
In June 2003, she attempted to tell the relatives of the murdered Stolić family, Serbian residents of Obilić, that "the crime was not committed by Albanian extremists, but by extremists on both sides", and was ejected from their property.[4][5]
In an opinion piece in The Guardian on May 9, 2007, she blamed the departure of the Krajina Serbs from Croatia on orders from their leaders on the territorial designs of the Serbian political elite rather than on the Croat military's Operation Storm. [6] Another reason of her controversy is her support of Croatian President Stjepan Mesić and her entitling of him as a "proven anti-fascist in both word and act", despite his many inflammatory nationalist comments in support of the fascist Ustashi during the 1990s agitation for war.
Vojislav Šešelj, incarcerated at the Hague's ICTY, has written a book concerning Kandić's support for Ustashi forces in Croatia during the 1990s war entitled Afera Hrtkovici i Ustaška Kurva Nataša Kandić (translated in English: The Hrtkovci Affair and the Ustasha Whore Nataša Kandić).[7]
She has further been the target of criticism in Serbia for her attendance of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of secession from Serbia in February 2008.
