A Ukrainian human rights leader was brutally attacked and beaten.
Dmytro Groisman was attacked late May 23 in his apartment building in Vinnitsja, according to Leonard Terlitzky, the director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Kiev.
Groisman, an attorney who is Jewish, said he believes the attack is connected to his human rights work.
He is the program coordinator of the Vinnitsja Human Rights Group, a grass-roots nongovernmental organization that is a partner with the U.N. Human Rights Commission and HIAS, providing legal assistance to asylum seekers and refugees in Vinnitsja.
“HIAS deplores the attack on Dmytro Groisman,” said Gideon Aronoff, the president and CEO of HIAS. “As the head of a small local human rights organization that works directly with HIAS, his work puts him at the forefront of the effort to make Ukraine a secure and free country for all Ukrainians, including particularly its Jews and other minorities. Groisman and the community of human rights workers in Ukraine deserve justice to the fullest extent of the law as they struggle to improve the lives of others in Ukraine.”
Vinnitsja police are investigating the attack as an act of hooliganism by a group.
