Ukraine anti-corruption activist named suspect in assault

Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the Anti-Corruption
Action Centre in Kyiv, was named a suspect by prosecutors on Aug. 16 in an assault
case. Shabunin’s single punch against a video blogger, Vsevolod Filimonenko,
was recorded on video and widely broadcast in Ukraine. Shabunin has said
Filimonenko had engaged in a long pattern of harassment against him and he
punched him in retaliation for an insult against a colleague. He alleged
Filimonenko engaged in a deliberate harassment campaign against him to provoke
him to retaliate.

Prosecutors confirmed on the eve of the indictment
that they changed the criminal case against Shabunin to a standard assault,
carrying a maximum prison sentence of three years, rather than an assault
against a journalist, which carries a maximum sentence of five years. The
indictment against Shabunin came after tax authorities opened a criminal
investigation in June against the Anti-Corruption Action Centre that he leads.
Shabunin alleged the investigation is part of an effort to ruin the activity of
his anti-corruption centre.

The NGO community has come to Shabunin’s defense,
including Parliamentary Free Speech and Information Policy Committee Head
Victoria Siumar, who said Shabunin was provoked and a case is being fabricated
against him. “Vitaliy is that forest ranger that many don’t like,” she said on
her Facebook page on Aug. 16. “These rangers do good things and a wise
government must understand that.”

Zenon Zawada: It’s hard to fault the Ukrainian government for pursuing a criminal
case when there’s video evidence that has been widely broadcasted. Yet the fact
of Shabunin being systemically harassed and provoked is suspicious against the
backdrop of a tax investigation against his centre. When considering that the
Poroshenko administration has demonstrated a pattern of underhanded tactics
against its political opponents (including Lviv Mayor Sadovyi and Mikheil
Saakashvili), the pressure being placed against Shabunin is worthy of
suspicion. We have mentioned that Poroshenko is increasingly reflecting
authoritarian methods and Shabunin being eventually convicted would certainly
fall into that pattern.