Subject: [CivilSoc] Civil Courage Prize Awarded to Serbia's Natasa Kandic
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 22 2000 - 17:20:28 EDT
On September 26, Natasa Kandic of Serbia became the first recipient
of The Civil Courage Prize and a gift of $50,000, awarded by the
Northcote Parkinson Fund "for resisting evil at great personal risk."
Ms. Kandic is a sociologist who founded the Humanitarian Law Center
in Belgrade in 1991. Throughout the nineties her center, according to
the Fund, developed a reputation for "accurate and unflinching
reporting of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia." In 1995 Ms. Kandic
investigated crimes committed by the Croatian army and police against
the Krajina Serbs. She helped protect Serbs from ethnically-motivated
prosecution by the Croatian government, but also documented crimes
committed by the Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitaries. In Bosnia,
she helped protect the rights of Muslims persecuted by Serbian and
Croatian forces.
During 1999, despite the risks posed by the NATO bombing, Ms. Kandic
traveled to Kosovo and worked to protect Kosovar Albanians, Serbs,
Roma and Muslim minorities from persecution and reprisals. Her life
was repeatedly threatened by the Milosevic regime.
At a reception at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
in London, where the Civil Courage Prize was awarded, Michael Howard,
president of IISS, called the award "a magnificent conception with
which I am proud to be associated." According to John Train, chairman
of the Northcote Parkinson, it was the heroic example of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn that primarily led him to establish the prize.
At the same time that Ms. Kandic's award was announced, a special
cash prize was also announced for Sergei Khodorovich, former
representative of the Russian Social Fund (RSF), created by
Solzhenitsyn to aid the families of dissidents imprisoned under the
Soviet regime. The KGB arrested Mr. Khodorovich in 1983 and, unable
to extract a "confession," sentenced him to hard labor in Siberia.
After being amnestied by Gorbachev, Mr. Khodorovich moved to France,
where he now lives.
John Temple Swing is executive director of the Northcote Parkinson
Fund, whose offices are at 67A East 77th Street, New York, NY
10021-1813. Tel. (212) 737-1011 Fax. (212) 737-6459.
For further information about the prize and fund, visit:
http://www.civilcourageprize.org/
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