Oksana Loses Her Brave Battle

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman who prosecutors say was gang-raped, half-strangled and then set on fire in an attack that sparked street protests in a provincial Ukrainian town, has died, a hospital official said.

Hundreds of people took to the streets earlier this month after police released two of Oksana Makar's three suspected attackers whose parents had political connections, re-igniting a public debate on corruption in the ex-Soviet republic.

Oksana's story went worldwide after her mother made a video of her lying distraught in her hospital bed and prodded her to describe her attack on camera.

Kitti Green & the KGB

From Adelaide Now:

THREE women were stripped naked and an Aussie filmmaker was kidnapped as the KGB broke up a feminist protest.

Kitti Green spent more than six hours being interrogated by the local KGB security service, who freed her only after the Australian embassy in Moscow intervened.

The KGB dumped Ms Green at the Lithuanian border, but three Ukrainian women who were travelling with her - Inna Shevchenko, Oxana Shachko and Alexandra Nemchinov - were beaten after being seized at a Minsk railway station.

"They were blindfolded and driven around in a bus all night," the feminist group Femen said.

"They were taken into the woods, had oil poured on them, were forced to take their clothes off, were threatened to be set on fire.

"They threatened them with a knife, which they later used to cut off their hair. Then they threw them out into the woods naked and without documents."

The women were protesting to mark President Alexander Lukashenko's disputed re-election a year ago.

From Salon:

A group of women from a Ukrainian topless-protest group on Wednesday recounted their ordeal in neighboring Belarus, where they claimed they were kidnapped, beaten and abused by local security officials.

Oksana Shechko told the Associated Press that she and two fellow activists with Femen were interrogated on a bus for 12 hours, made to undress in the woods in freezing temperatures, punched in the head and back, threatened with death and rape, smeared with paint and had some of their hair cut of.

Shechko charged that the Belarusian authorities were punishing them for a protest in Minsk on Monday in which they bared their breasts to bring attention to President Aleksander Lukashenko’s crackdown on the opposition.

“It was a real fight for survival,” Shechko said after returning to Kiev, her voice trembling. “We ended up in the hands of the butchers who kill and terrify the Belarusian people.”

Ukraine: Yulia Tymoshenko Arrested

From Yahoo News:

France on Thursday said it had summoned the Ukrainian ambassador in Paris to express its "serious concern" over the arrest of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The envoy was told that France would continue to follow very closely the developments in the case that saw Tymoshenko's arrest on Friday for contempt of court in her abuse of power trial, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said.

He was told of "the serious concern generated by the detention of Mrs. Yulia Tymoshenko and more generally of the progress of (her) trial," spokeswoman Christine Fages told reporters.

Tymoshenko risks being jailed for up to 10 years if convicted for abuse of power over gas deals she signed with Russia in 2009.

The European Union and the United States have been sharply critical of her arrest, saying it raised concerns about the rule of law in Ukraine.

Tymoshenko on Wednesday bitterly accused her prosecutors of being agents of a "machine of repression" against opposition to President Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukraine: Govt No Place For Women

From the Ottawa Citizen:

It's not looking good for women in politics in Ukraine. First, newly sworn in Premier Mykola Azarov Mykola Azarov asked an Orthodox priest to exorcise his predecessor's spirit from his office. "It was very hard to breathe in there," he told reporters. The last occupant of the office was the glamorous Orange Revolution princess and former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who is now in opposition. Next, Azarov said the current cabinet didn't have any women because the situation in Ukraine was too tough for any woman to handle. "People who can work 16-18 hours a day ... have been taken into the government. Conducting reforms is not women's business."