In the wake of the killing of another high-profile civil activist in Ukraine, Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations and human rights organizations have issued a statement demanding the resignations of the country’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Kateryna Gandziuk, a civic activist and local council member from Kherson, who was attacked with acid on July 31, resulting in severe burns of her head and body, died in hospital in Kyiv on Nov. 4.
“The investigation into the attack on Kateryna Gandziuk once again revealed the apparent inability of the law enforcement system to effectively investigate this and a number of other attacks on civic activists that took place in various regions after the Revolution of Dignity,” reads the statement, which was signed by 73 NGOs and human rights organizations.
Police in Kherson first classified the attack on Gandziuk as “hooliganism.” Under public pressure, the attack was reclassified as “serious bodily harm with a goal to intimidate” and later to “attempted murder.”
Two months, on Sept. 25, the police reclassified the case as “attempted assassination.” After Gandziuk’s death, the case was reclassified again, as a “contract killing.”
For this reason, the signatories of the statement also demanded the resignations of the senior officers of the Kherson police department.
“We are outraged at the state of the investigations into the attacks on and murders of civic activists, and demand the resignations of the leadership of the Kherson police, which has sabotaged the investigation into the attack on Kateryna Gandziuk from the very beginning,” the statement reads.
The 73 signatories of the statement include the Human Rights Information Center, the Association of Ukrainian Human Rights Monitors on Law Enforcement, and the Ukrainian Institute for Human Rights.
