A police officer cordons off the area around the charred car of journalist Pavel Sheremet, after he was killed in a car bomb in Kiev on July 20, 2016. A car bomb in central Kiev today morning killed well-known pro-Western journalist Pavel Sheremet, AFP journalists and officials said. The 44-year-old, originally from Belarus but a Russian citizen who worked for Ukrainska Pravda, an independent news site, died when an explosion tore through the car he was in. / AFP / SERGEI SUPINSKY (Photo credit should read SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

Ukraine: Legacy of murdered activist must be an end of impunity for attackers

Responding to news thaKateryna Handzyuk, a prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption activist has died from injuries sustained three months ago in an acid attack, Oksana Pokalchuk, Amnesty International’s Ukraine Director, said:

“The death of this fearless civil society activist must spur the Ukrainian authorities into providing a credible answer to the question on everyone’s lips: who killed Kateryna Handzyuk? This answer will only come through an impartial, effective and transparent investigation, the type of which we have not seen in so many cases.”

“The killing of Kateryna Handzyuk is the latest in a series of brutal attacks against civil society activists in Ukraine over the last year for which only a handful of actual perpetrators have been arrested and none of the people who ordered the attacks identified. The authorities have so far chosen to focus on a few individual cases and ignored the wider pattern and numerous specific instances, but this must now change.

“It is vital that Kateryna Handzyuk’s legacy should not be her work alone, but that her death should mark a line in the sand whereby the authorities ensure that anyone who harasses, intimidates or assaults civil society activists is brought to justice.”