Vesna Pešić (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Пешић) (born May 6, 1940 in Grocka, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian politician, one of the leaders of opposition movement in Serbia.[1]
In the early 1970s Pešić became the member of the Intellectuals' Movement for the Defense and Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, popularly known as the “Belgrade opposition”. In 1982, she was arrested and imprisoned for organizing the protests against the arrest of a group of the University of Belgrade students.
Pešić was a founder member of the Yugoslav Helsinki Committee (1985), the Association for the Yugoslav Democratic Initiative (1989), the Yugoslav European Movement (1991) and the Centre for Antiwar Action (1991). From 1992 till 1999 she was the president of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, and from 1993 until 1997 she was one of the leaders of the Coalition Zajedno (Together), with Vuk Drašković's Serbian Renewal Movement and Zoran Đinđić's Democratic Party.
It is worth a mention that Centre for Antiwar Action is organization largely supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USA government institution.[2][3]
Her many honors include the Award for Democracy of the U.S. National Foundation for Democracy (1993), the W. Averell Harriman Award of the U.S. National Institute for Democracy (1997) from Washington, D.C., USA and the Andrei Sakharov Award from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Sakharov Foundation for Freedom (1997). She is praised as '"contributor in developing democracy and civil society"' from Institute of Peace, founded by US Congress.
Pešić served as national Ambassador to Mexico from 2001 to 2005, firstly for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and then for its successor, Serbia and Montenegro.
After the merger of the Civic Alliance of Serbia into the Liberal Democratic Party in 2007, she became the president of the Political Council of the Liberal Democratic Party. Since 2007, she has also been a Member of Parliament.
In May 2008, after parliamentary elections in Serbia, Pešić stated that "if pro-EU camp fails to form a government, elections should be nullified". In addition, in her opinion, any future elections should be prevented.[4]
Vesna Pešić is a senior scientific associate of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory.
She was previously married to lawyer Srđa Popović, with whom she has a son named Boris.