I never thought I would work in the human rights protection area. But on that sunny day in late July 2018 my life turned upside down. A friend of mine, a young woman, an outspoken fighter against local corruption, was violently attacked with a liter of acid right by her home.
I talk about Kateryna Handziuk.
Almost 40% of her body was burnt. For three months she courageously fought for her life, survived through eight surgeries, but eventually succumbed to her wounds. Her only “guilt” for which she suffered that much was her fight against the local pro-Russian mafia in the southern city of Kherson.
This brutal attack pooled together hundreds of absolutely different people from all over Ukraine. They all united under a joint mission to bring the instigators of this terrible crime to justice. Some of these people brought in their own stories, and we learned that attacks against activists were quite common, especially in the southe and east.
While reforms were kicked off on the national level, pro-Russian actors kept misusing the non-reformed law enforcement and judiciary. They were never brought to responsibility after the EuroMaidan Revolution that ended Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency in 2014. Being confident of impunity, they did not fear to silence and intimidate vocal activists. That was until Katia’s case burst and attracted the attention of the country – and the world.
Though we tremendously wanted to save Katia, we failed. But there were many more others alive, and they all needed collective protection. We decided to create the so-called “Handziuk’s list” – a list of 55 assaults against activists in 2017-2018. Its goal was to show the systemic nature of such attacks. I was shocked to learn that in many cases police officers were not only sabotaging investigations, but themselves performed them. The only chance to achieve justice was to bring the investigations up to Kyiv.
Our list included three attacks against Serhiy Sternenko, a rights activist from Odesa and YouTube blogger, who fought against the Russian coup attempt in Odesa in spring 2014. Later he was counteracting the corruption of the tainted Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov. At that moment I did not know much about him. Pro-Russian media, including the three TV channels recently shut down by President Volodymyr Zelensky, spent plenty of airtime demonizing Sternenko. A former top official of Yanukovych’s administration, Andriy Portnov, publicly promised to jail him. All of this was an argument definitely in the young man’s favor.
When I started to get into details, I was really struck by the violence with which Sternenko was attacked. There were three assaults against him over four months in early 2018. The second and the third attacks were clearly assassination attempts. All of his requests for state guards were turned down. Sternenko was left one on one with all the danger. During the third attack, the attacker was injured and later died. Sternenko faced criminal charges for self-defense, but the case fell apart in court, and he was released on personal bail on Jan. 29.
Until recently, I believed that I have done enough to protect Sternenko from political persecution. I was wrong. Another criminal case on bogus charges, which was pending since 2016, was promptly revived in Odesa. On Feb. 23, the court sentenced him to seven years and three months in prison. He was detained in the courtroom and brought to the detention center. I will not go into details about why the trial was politicized and the court biased. Civil society organizations have done this already. This sentence drove a new wave of all-Ukrainian open-ended protesting campaigns.
Unlike with Handziuk, we did not make friends with Sternenko, despite a lot of time spent together at various events and meetings, where we were telling the partners a real story about him. Then why am I doing all this? The answer is simple. I see blatant injustice and I am desperate to prevent this from happening again to anyone else in my country. I know well that if we give up once, we will lose tens and hundreds of others.
For me supporting Sternenko is not about him personally. It is about our modern struggle for the rule of law, for a healthy functional law enforcement system and impartial judiciary, for closing vulnerabilities of the state institutions which the Kremlin and its proxies actively use against our country. It seems to me that this is exactly the opinion of those thousands of people who took to the streets on Feb. 27. It was my birthday, but once again I had to celebrate it surrounded by thousands of like-minded people.
The protesters announced two clear demands:
- release Sternenko and other political prisoners;
- kick off the real judicial reform beginning with the immediate relaunch of the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges with the international experts having a crucial role in the vetting/selection process.
I cannot stop campaigning for human rights and judicial reform until the activists will need to prove the innocence of a person appointed by Kherson police as a scapegoat in Handziuk’s case. It is ridiculous that the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s leader, Vitaliy Shabunin, has to prove that explosives by his parents’ apartments or arson at his house are not just small things. I can go on and on with similar cases.
While campaigning for Sternenko, we campaign for justice for everybody. As the EU Ambassador Matti Maasikas mentioned recently: “A flawed court system undermines the state of Ukraine every day.” I fully agree. We have to clean the judiciary of the mafia which hides behind judicial ropes. This will pave the way for cleansing law enforcement as well.
Afterward, I hope I will be able to celebrate my birthday quietly and calmly, with my phone off, being sure that justice in this country does not need our everyday protection anymore.
Maryna Khromykh is an activist who is a member of the“Who is behind Handziuk’s murder?” initiative and a human rights defender with the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
