Nataša Kandić

Nataša Kandić (Serbian Cyrillic: Наташа Кандић; born in 1946) is a Serbian political writer, 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. It was formed in 1992.[1] The HLC's research was integral to the war crimes prosecutions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), particularly the "smoking gun" video linking Serbian military forces to the Srebrenica massacres. She has won numerous international awards for her human rights work (Amnesty International's Objective Observer Award, among others). She is a figure of controversy in Serbia where she was the subject of a defamation lawsuit by former President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić.

Nataša Kandić
Наташа Кандић
Nataša Kandić in 2015
1st Coordinator of the RECOM Reconciliation Network
Assumed office
2014
Preceded byPosition created
1st Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center
In office
1992–2013
Preceded byPosition created
Succeeded bySandra Orlović
Personal details
Born (1946-09-29) 29 September 1946
Kragujevac, Yugoslavia
ResidenceBelgrade
EducationUniversity of Belgrade
OccupationHuman rights activist
ProfessionSociologist

Humanitarian Law Center

Kandić is a sociologist by training.[2] In 1992, she founded and became executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, a human rights organization which has been praised for its systematic and impartial investigations of human rights abuses.[3] Since the start of the Yugoslav wars in the early 1990s, she has documented and protested against war crimes committed between 1991 and 1999, including torture, rape, and murder. According to Businessweek, her work drew "the hatred of fellow Serbs and military leaders throughout the region -- and won the admiration of human-rights defenders worldwide".[4]

Throughout the war in Kosovo, she travelled back and forth across Serbia, providing information to the outside world about human rights violations being committed by police and paramilitary groups. She was one of the few Serbian rights activists to continue investigating the Kosovo crisis after the murder of Slavko Curuvija and to collaborate with ethnic Albanian activists.[2] She and her staff were anonymously threatened for their work, and their office was spray-painted with a swastika and the message "NATO's spies".[2] In December 1999, HLC lawyer Teki Bokshi was arrested in Kosovo by Serbian police, drawing protest from the HLC and a United Nations envoy.[5]

The evidence she gathered was later used in the preparation of indictments by the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.[3] She provided a video of Bosnian Serb paramilitaries executing six Bosnian Muslim prisoners near Trnovo, used as proof of Serbia's role in the Srebrenica massacre, in which 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed. Kandić had located a copy of the tape, originally made by the paramilitaries themselves, from a man in Šid, who provided it only on the condition that she not air it until he had safely left the country. Excerpts from the tape were later shown on Serbian and Bosnian television. The Guardian described the tape as the "smoking gun"—"the final, incontrovertible proof of Serbia's part in the Srebrenica massacres"[6]—while The New York Times called the airing of the tape on Serbian television a "watershed" moment for the country.[7] Kandić criticized a 2007 judgement in Serbia as the presiding judge, had described the crime as “killing six men of Muslim origin”, whom "it was not clear came from Srebrenica". Kandić said "This judgment sends a very dangerous message,” further stating, "Both from a moral and factual point of the view, this is not justice".[7]

In 2003, she criticized the deployment of Serbian troops to Afghanistan, stating that the army should first be reformed and war crimes trials concluded.[8]

In 2004, she contributed to the exposure of US journalist Jack Kelley, a USA Today reporter discovered to have fabricated several important stories, when she disputed his account of using her as a source for a July 1999 front-page story on a typed Yugoslav Army order to "cleanse" a village in Kosovo.[9]

2003 Republic Square incident

In 2003, Kandić attended a protest rally held on the International Day of the Disappeared in Republic Square in Belgrade, against the lack of information about Kosovo Serbs missing since the 1999 conflict. She was confronted and repeatedly insulted by other attendees who called her a "traitor". After Nikola Popović, an elderly Serb refugee from Kosovo confronted her directly, she slapped him in the face and yelled back at him. The policemen present took her aside and requested her documents, which she protested saying they should instead request them from other persons. The police later charged her for violent behaviour in public and disobeying the police orders.[10][11]

The organization representing Serb refugees also filed charges. She justified her actions by asserting she had to "defend [myself] from Serbian patriotism". In July 2005, the First Municipal Court in Belgrade dismissed the private lawsuit against Kandić. The attendees called the presiding judge a "Serb traitor".[12]

Defamation lawsuit

Kandić was originally found guilty on charges of defamation in February 2009 after her 2006 statements that Tomislav Nikolić killed elderly people in Croatia during the war. She was fined 200,000 Serbian dinars (around 2,000 EUR at the time).[13] International human rights organization Front Line condemned the charges as "part of a campaign aimed at stigmatizing human right defenders and human rights organisations operating in Serbia, portraying them as enemies of the country",[14] and Human Rights Watch named the case as an example of criminal libel laws used as "a tool to silence human rights criticisms."[15] The charges were later overturned on appeal by the Belgrade District Court.[16]

International recognition

Kandić is a recipient of more than 20 international, regional and national human rights awards. In 2000 she won 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.[3]

She was listed by Time as one of its 36 European Heroes in 2003, and again featured as a Time European Hero in 2006.[17] In 2004, the People in Need Foundation awarded Kandić and the HLC its Homo Homini Award, presented by Václav Havel.[18]

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 was named to the Order of Danica Hrvatska, awarded by the President of Croatia to individuals who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of moral values.[19]

In April 2018, she was honoured for her work with the "Hartën e Artë të Kosovës" ("Golden Map of Kosovo") award by Ramush Haradinaj, at the time Prime Minister of Kosovo and former leader of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).[20]

Her awards include the following:

See also

References
  1. "About Us". Humanitarian Law Center. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  2. Carlotta Gall (23 May 1999). "Crisis in the Balkans: The Advocate: In a Climate of Fear, a Belgrade Serb Who Is Documenting the Horror of Kosovo". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  3. "Nataša Kandić - 1999". Martin Ennals Award. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  4. Rachel Tiplady (29 May 2005). "Natasa Kandić profile". Businessweek. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  5. "Serbia arrests human rights lawyer". BBC News. 5 December 1999. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  6. Tim Judah and Daniel Sunter (4 June 2005). "How video that put Serbia in dock was brought to light". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  7. Nicholas Wood (10 April 2007). "Serbian Court Convicts 4 in Srebrenica Massacre". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  8. Nicholas Wood (18 December 2003). "Serbs May Help Patrol Afghanistan, but Qualms Abound". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  9. Jacques Steinberg (26 January 2006). "Source for USA Today Reporter Disputes Details of Kosovo Article". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  10. "Obeležen Međunarodni dan nestalih u Beogradu" (in Serbian). B92. 30 August 2003. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  11. "Kandićeva ošamarila izbeglicu iz Peći". Glas javnosti (in Serbian). 31 August 2003. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  12. "Attacks on Non-governmental Organizations, Media and Courts in Serbia (019-133-2)". Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade, Serbia. 20 August 2005. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  13. "Nataša Kandić osuđena za klevetu Nikolića" (in Serbian). Radio Television of Serbia. 5 February 2009. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  14. "Serbia: Threats against human rights defenders and organisations in Serbia following independence of Kosovo". Front Line. 22 February 2008. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  15. Kenneth Roth (2010). "The Abusers' Reaction: Intensifying Attacks on Human Rights Defenders, Organizations, and Institutions". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  16. "Serbia: Human Rights Defenders at Risk". Amnesty International. September 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  17. Andrew Herscher (2007). "Evidence, Justice, and Truth: An Interview with Nataša Kandić". The Journal of the International Institute. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  18. "Previous Recipients of the Homo Homini Award". People in Need. Archived from the original on 1 May 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2011.
  19. "Priopćenja 129/06" (in Croatian). Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Croatia). 11 August 2006. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  20. "HARADINAJ NDERON KANDIQIN ME "HARTËN E ARTË TË KOSOVËS"". rtklive.com (in Albanian). 23 April 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
  21. "2011 Rule of Law Award". American Bar Association. 2011. Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  22. "Civil Courage Prize". civilcourageprize.org. 2010. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
  23. Alles over penningen. Munten en Penningen. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  24. "Natasa Kandic and The Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade to receive the 2000 Roger E. Joseph Prize from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion" Archived 2011-02-04 at the Wayback Machine, HUC-JIR website. Retrieved 27 February 2011.
  25. "Premio internazionale Alexander Langer" (in Italian). alexanderlanger.org. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  26. http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=22783
  27. "International "Hrant Dink" Award Presented to Nataša Kandić - Fond za humanitarno pravo/Humanitarian Law Center/Fondi për të Drejtën Humanitare | Fond za humanitarno pravo/Humanitarian Law Center/Fondi për të Drejtën Humanitare". www.hlc-rdc.org. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
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