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. She found video-proof of the Srebrenica massacre, which placed responsibility for one of the most atrocious horrors since the end of World War II – the murder of eight thousand civilians, whose bodies were concealed in mass graves – on the shoulders of certain officials from the Ministry of the Interior. 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. She is the founder and director of the Humanitarian Law Center. In Serbia she is considered persona non grata in large areas of the country. The strongest accusation, of having sold her own intellectual and moral resources to the Croat fascists, or ustascia (a derogatory term used to offend the Croats), was levelled against her by Vojslav Seseli, indicted with crimes against humanity by the Hague International Tribunal. 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. She also caused considerable animosity when she attended the Kosovan declaration of independence. On the subject of her attackers, in an interview released to the “Corrirere della Sera” she said: “They always call me a traitor, even if I document everything: the crimes against Croats and Muslims, against Albanians and Roma, against Kosovan Serbs and against those from Croatia... They can kill me, but they cannot destroy the proof I have gathered ".
