Vesna Pešić
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vesna Pešić (in Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Пешић) is a senior scientific associate of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory and the founder and director of the Centre for Antiwar Action, the first pacifist organization in Serbia, in 1991.
Vesna Pešić engaged in the struggle for democracy, peace, and human rights in the early 1970s as the member of the Intellectuals' Movement for the Defense and Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, popularly known as “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.
Vesna Pešić was a founding member of the Yugoslav Helsinki Committee (1985), the Association for the Yugoslav Democratic Initiative (1989) and the Yugoslav European Movement (1991). From 1992 till 1998 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 SPO and Zoran Đinđić's Democratic Party.
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), and the Andrei Sakharov Award from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Sakharov Foundation for Freedom (1997).
She was Ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro in Mexico from 2001 to 2005.
