To Editor-in-Chief Carla Buzasi, Huffington Post UK
Dear Ms. Buzasi,
It has come to my attention that the most recent contributor for your web publication is Inna Shevchenko.
I don’t know whether the decision to receive Shevchenko to your team belonged to you personally, but the responsibility for it nonetheless falls on your shoulders as Editor-in-chief for Huffington Post UK.
Inna Shevchenko’s first (and so far the only) contribution is an article titled “Sextremism: The New Way for Feminism to Be!”[1] and her biography[2], published on your website, claims that her philosophy and her organization, FEMEN, is non violent.
However, the claims in that biography are both incomplete and misleading, given actions by Shevchenko and others in her organization that are already a matter of public record.
For instance, her bio says that she “cut down 8meters wooden catholic[sic] cross with chainsaw on the main square in Kiev, Ukraine.” This was ostensibly in protest of alleged historical patriarchal oppression against women that emanated from the Catholic Church.
To be accurate, it was an Orthodox Christian cross and it was in front of the Oktyabyrski (Октыябырский) Palace.
The Oktyabyrski Palace was the Headquarters of the infamous NKVD in the 1930s where hundreds of thousands of people were executed by the oppressive Stalinist regime that ruled over the region. So it was not just a simple cross or a religious icon. It was a memorial cross commemorating the victims of Stalinist oppression; real oppression that targeted both men and women.
Not only has she denigrated the suffering of those victims, including those that survived the horrific ordeal, but she bragged about it and still brags about it on your publication’s website.
In another action, FEMEN member Yana Zhdanova, with the words “Kill Kirill” painted on her back, attempted a violent attack on the head of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Borispol airport, near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.[3]
So my question, and the question of all the people involved in A Voice for Men, is why? Why are you providing a voice to a self proclaimed extremist and indiscriminate criminal vandal? Why are you providing a platform for an organization that has advocated for murdering church officials?
Inna Shevcenko is a convicted felon in Ukraine, taking advantage of the fact that her native country is not in the EU and therefore a European arrest warrant is difficult to issue in her name. Is this the direction that Huffington Post UK wants to go, providing a platform for violent thugs and organizations that actively advocate for murdering Church officials, and who train other activists to further similar and increased violence?[4]
Because if that is the case the public needs to know it.
Thank you for your time and I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Lucian Vâlsan
European News Director, A Voice for Men
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/inna-shevchenko/
[4] http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-violence/femen-activism-and-the-coming-violence/
