The death of Ukrainian activist Kateryna Handzyuk on her hospital bed on November 4 spurred nationwide outrage. Hundreds rallied all over the country, demanding an effective investigation into the acid attack which after three months of attempts at treatment took the life of the 33-year old Kherson activist and city official, and 73 human rights organizations signed a collective appeal calling upon Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, “who sabotaged the law enforcement reform in Ukraine,” to resign.
Mr. Lutsenko appeared to adhere to this call and announced he is ready to step down. However, this intention soon turned farcical as the parliamentary coalition announced it would not support the resignation, which predictably failed to be voted through. The calls on him and Mr. Avakov to resign came because the fatal acid attack on Ms. Handzyuk is one of the latest in a string of assaults on civic activists all over Ukraine – at least 55 since 2017. Human rights defenders say one of the reasons for them is the incapability of Ukraine’s law enforcement to conduct an effective investigation. There are also suspicions that law enforcement is in cahoots with the attackers and is sabotaging the investigations.
On the insistence of National Deputy Mustafa Nayyem, a temporary parliamentary commission of 18 MPs was formed in order to analyze the results of investigations on civic activists. However, Mr. Lutsenko announced it will not receive any information from the investigation. Ms. Handzyuk’s lawyer Yevheniya Zakrevska also said she will do what she can to prevent the investigation’s data from reaching the commission, as the latter includes People’s Front MP Anton Herashchenko, a comrade-in-arms of Minister Avakov. Ms. Zakrevska says Mr. Herashchenko regularly publicized pre-trial investigation data before it was shared with her client and that his presence on the commission is an “insult to the memory of Handzyuk.”
Currently, five people have been detained on suspicion of carrying out the attack; of them, one, Serhiy Torbin, is suspected of being the organizer. The head of the National Police, Serhiy Kniazev, reported that based on their investigation thus far, the suspects first planned to beat up Ms. Handzyuk for a reward of $5,000 (for all five) but then decided to douse her with sulphuric acid instead. All five are veterans of the war in the Donbas.
However, the ultimate mandator of the murder is unknown and Ms. Handzyuk’s friends worry he never will be. Mr. Lutsenko spoke of 12 possible suspects in the murder, but the victim’s friends have little trust in official versions. The reason for this is the police’s initial classification of the attempted murder as hooliganism and the investigation’s eagerness to pin the crime on the first random suspect, who was rescued only thanks to the interference of journalists who made public his alibi. Thus, activists and journalists are scouring the issue in parallel with the official investigation and are pointing at Ihor Pavlovskyi, assistant to Poroshenko Bloc MP Mykola Palamarchuk.
While we are waiting for further developments, let’s look into who Kateryna was and what she did to become one of the most famous civic activists of southern Ukraine. What follows is an adapted translation from Inna Semenova’s article on NV.
Civic activity
Kateryna Handzyuk was a civic activist for many years. During her studies at Kherson State University she took part in the Orange revolution of 2004; during the Euro-Maidan Revolution, she was one of the most prominent participants of the protests in Kherson. For some time she headed the youth wing of the Batkivshchyna party, but in 2015 left it in solidarity with Kherson Mayor Volodymyr Mykolaienko, who was expelled from the party. In her last years, Ms. Handzyuk combined her activism with being an advisor to the Kherson mayor and holding a position at the Kherson City Council.
Journalist investigations
Together with Kherson journalist Serhiy Nikitenko, who was also attacked in 2018, Ms. Handzyuk co-founded the Agency of civic journalism Mist and the website most.ks.ua. Starting from 2012, the portal became one of the key Internet media in Kherson, focusing on local politics, particularly on monitoring state procurements and expenditures of state money, as well as anti-corruption investigations.
Fighting separatist movements in Kherson
In her last years, Ms. Handzyuk focused on resisting pro-Russian movements in Kherson. Starting from 2014 and the first months of conflict in eastern Ukraine, she resisted Russia’s attempts to spread separatist activity to Kherson Oblast.
In 2018, Ms. Handzyuk publicized documents proving that representatives of pro-Russian powers illegally provide paid administrative services in the city, issuing certificates with stamped seals. She claimed that these people are the same ones who gathered rallies calling for a Russian invasion in 2014 and recruited mercenaries into terrorist detachments of Russia’s puppet “republics” in eastern Ukraine.
Confrontation with regional law enforcement
An integral part of Ms. Handzyuk’s struggle against local manifestations of separatism was her conflict with the law enforcement agencies of the Kherson Oblast. The activist repeatedly and rigorously blamed the security forces for their inaction in combating pro-Russian separatism, as well as in insufficient efforts to investigate the attacks on Kherson activists and corruption.
In 2017, the head of the Kherson police department of economic security, Artem Antoshchuk, sued Ms. Handzyuk after she accused him of extorting bribes from City Council officials. Mr. Antoshchuk filed a lawsuit against Ms. Handzyuk to protect his honor and dignity, but the court rejected most of his claims and charges.
In July 2018, Ms. Handzyuk criticized the security forces for their inaction in investigating an attack on her colleague, the journalist-investigator Mr. Nikitenko. “It took 32 days for the Kherson boys-in-blue to uncover that Serhiy was a journalist, I’m not joking, 32 (thirty-two). Now the investigation has risen to a new level: they are looking for witnesses of the event on Facebook,” she wrote sarcastically on her FB page. “I think by the year 3019, you can assign the guilt to some drug addict because no sane person believes you are seriously looking for anybody there.”
Volunteering
Ms. Handzyuk was also known for her multifaceted volunteer activities. She widely cooperated with the U.N. – for instance, in 2012, she worked in a U.N. development program project to develop sports activities in village regions of Kherson Oblast, working with schoolchildren and school football teachers.
Additionally, with the start of the war in the Donbas, Ms. Handzyuk took part in programs to help internally displaced persons from eastern Ukraine. She worked as a legal assistant to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Kherson Oblast and organized fund-raising campaigns to help children of IDPs.