Ukrainian activist dies from acid attack
KYIV, UKRAINE • Three months ago, an attacker splashed a litre of sulphuric acid over her head, burning 30 per cent of her body. But Kateryna Handziuk, an anti-corruption activist, continued to speak out from her hospital bed about unsolved attacks on dozens of civic activists in Ukraine this year.
On Sunday, after 11 surgeries and numerous skin grafts, Handziuk died from complications from her wounds.
Her scarred face already had become a rebuke of the foot-dragging of the government of President Petro Poroshenko on anti-corruption measures — a key demand of the protesters who ushered him to power in 2014.
“Yes, I know that I look bad, but at least I am being treated,” Handziuk told Hormadske Television from her hospital bed in September, two months after the attack. “And I’m sure that I look better than fairness and justice in Ukraine, because they are not being treated by anybody today.”
Rights groups say that at least 50 activists have been attacked this year in Ukraine, most while tangling with corrupt officials.
The Western-backed government has pushed through overhauls of the police and military, but critics say that corruption in state-owned companies, the courts and local government remains rampant. The International Monetary Fund has delayed some aid disbursement, in part because Ukraine has failed to establish a specialized anticorruption court.
Supporters of Poroshenko say that progress has been made, but that not all of Ukraine’s problems can be solved quickly. Criticism of his administration’s shortcomings, they say, distracts from Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.
Handziuk was known as a critic of corruption in law enforcement agencies, particularly police in her city, Kherson, near the border with Russian-occupied Crimea. She had campaigned against pro-Russia separatism but had recently shifted her focus to corruption and attacks on civic activists.
Poroshenko expressed condolences Sunday to Handziuk’s family and called for a thorough investigation. “I appeal to law enforcement to do everything to find the murderers, to punish the murderers, and to put them on trial,” he said.
Police detained five suspects and claimed to have detained the ringleader. But local courts reportedly released two suspects to house arrest pending trial.