Last year, on November 4, 2018, Ukrainian civic activist Kateryna Handzyuk died of wounds from an acid attack at the end of July of that year.
The 33-year old Handzyuk died in a Kyiv hospital where she was being treated for burns from the attack and local media suggested that her death was caused by a blood clot.
Hundreds of supporters gathered around Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry building in Kyiv on November 4, demanding that those responsible for her death be brought to justice.
She was attacked with sulfuric acid on July 31 outside of her Kherson home by an unknown attacker. She suffered severe burns over 40 percent of her body and lost sight in one of her eyes. Doctors in Kyiv performed 11 surgical procedures to try to save her life. From her hospital bed, Handzyuk vowed to track down her attackers. Funeral services were held for Handzyuk in Kherson on November 7.
Her death came amid a wave of attacks against Ukraine’s civic activists, with rights campaigners claiming law-enforcement agencies had failed to thoroughly investigate the cases, and suspicion of law-enforcement complicity in some of the attacks.
“Attacks against civil society activists are unacceptable. The perpetrators of this vicious crime must be brought to justice,” EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn tweeted. Similar condemnation had come from the United States as well.
Handzyuk had been targeted with legal action when she accused Artem Antoshchuk, department head in the Kherson Regional Police, of demanding a 3 percent cut from all contracts and tenders in the region. She won a fierce court battle.
The main suspect, Serhiy Torbin, was a former officer of the Kherson police, and was in the custody of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv. He was sentenced on June 6 of this year to six and a half years in prison. Mykyta Hrabchuk was identified as the man who carried out the attack and he was sentenced to a six-year prison term. Volodymyr Vasyanovych and Vyacheslav Vyshnevskiy were sentenced to four years in prison each, and Viktor Horbunov was sentenced to a three-year prison term for their roles in the attack against Handzyuk. Initially the men were charged with murder, but the charges were lessened to inflicting severe bodily harm.
Vladyslav Mahner, head of the Kherson regional Parliament, was arrested on suspicion of ordering the attack. He was later released on bail pending the conclusion of the investigation.
In a video message recorded from her hospital bed six weeks before her death, Handzyuk said she was certain the attack was meant to kill her. “Why do I consider it to be an assassination attempt? Because the acid was poured on my head,” she said. “If someone wanted to warn or silence me, they could have targeted my arms, legs or face – anywhere. But they poured a liter of acid on my head. …Yes, I know that I look bad now. But I’m sure that I look much better than law and justice in Ukraine. Because they aren’t treated by anyone.”
Source: Ukrainian civic activist doused with acid dies,” by Christopher Miller (RFE/RL), The Ukrainian Weekly, November 11, 2018.