One of the founders of the influential feminist movement Femen - known for its lively topless protests on human rights issues - has been found dead in her apartment in Paris.
Oksana Shachko, a 31-year-old Ukraine native, was discovered Monday with a suicide note next to her body, her friends said.
The note, written in English, was addressed to fellow artists in Paris and stated, "You are all a fake," according to the Ukraine news website Unian.
It reportedly had been her third suicide attempt in the past two years. She was last seen alive on July 20.
"As far as I know, she was concerned that everything is going badly in the world," said Anna Hutsol, one of Femen’s four creators, Radio Free Europe reports.
Hutsol, on her Facebook page, called Shachko "the most fearless and vulnerable … We mourn together with her relatives and friends and expect for the official version from the police."
Another founder, Inna Shevchenko, called Shachko "one of the remarkable women of our time … one of the greatest fighters who fought hard against the unjust circumstances she happened to find herself [in], who fought hard against injustice of society, who fought hard for herself and for all women around.
"We stood up together on Independent Square in Kiev, waving flags into the sky and shouting slogans into the silence, we survived in the Belarus forest together, after being tortured and we marched the streets of Paris together … Oksana always remained a true fighter. [She] left us but she is here and everywhere. She’s in each of us."
Shachko, a painter, had had her first solo exhibition in Paris two years ago.
She and three others founded Femen in Ukraine in 2008 with the provocative slogan, "I came, I stripped, I won!'’
Among the group’s targets were racism, sexism and authoritarianism – and they zeroed in on such targets as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the far-right National Front Party in France.
Seven years ago, Shachko and two other Femen members were abducted and forced to strip nude in a forest after staging a topless protest mocking Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, according to The Daily Mail.
The kidnappers reportedly poured oil over the three women, threatened to set them on fire and cut off their hair.
Shachko was abducted a second time by unknown thugs during a Putin visit to Ukraine and had to be hospitalized after a severe beating, The Mail said.
Femen reportedly has branches on at least four continents.
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