Fearless and Vulnerable

Oksana Shachko, 31 years old and one of the women who co-founded FEMEN, was found dead in her Paris apartment. With great sorrow and deep pain I must confirm the death of Oksana, FEMEN activist Inna Shevchenko told the Guardian. Shevchenko also lived in Paris. The cause of death was unknown.

FEMEN was founded in 2008 and landed in international headlines quickly through its signature topless protests against political injustice. The years since were less clean—internal splits, court cases, the kind of organizational turbulence that tends to accumulate around movements built on spectacle and personal courage. Oksana had already left the group by this point, after an incident during Vladimir Putin’s visit to Ukraine in which unknown men abducted her and beat her badly enough to require hospitalization. The kind of thing that changes your relationship to everything you were doing before.

The group’s statement described her as the more than fearless and vulnerable Oksana Shachko and said they were waiting together with her family and friends for an official police response. What the circumstances meant, period, was unclear. It stayed that way.