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Reports emerged from international sources over the weekend that
Chechnya – formally known as the Chechen Republic – has
reportedly begun arresting, detaining, torturing and potentially
murdering gay men. According to Novaya Gazeta, Chechnya is
detaining gay men “in connection with their non-traditional
sexual orientation, or suspicion of such.”

They added, “At the moment, we received information about the
arrest of more than a hundred men. Novaya Gazeta has already
known the names of three victims, but our sources claim that the
victims much more.”

Crime Russia added details to the account reporting:

The law enforcement would usually seize them at home, but
sometimes they arrested them at work. Raids were carried out by
employees of local departments of internal affairs, Special
Rapid Response Team Terek, and Private Security Regiment of the
Chechen MIA (also known as the “Neftyanoy Polk” (Rus. “Oil
Regiment”), according to the fugitives.

Employees of the abovementioned agencies, as well as those of
some other Chechen intelligence agencies, would frame those
suspected of homosexuality by contacting them via the Internet.
They later abducted and threw them to secret prisons.

Arrested LGBT people were sent to at least 2 such prisons at the
end of 2016, according to the Radio Station. One is located in
the Town of Argun and the other in the Tsotsi-Yurt village. The
Argun prison was organized in a former military commandant’s
office, as reported earlier.

It gets worse:

Many detainees were tortured to get them to inform on all the
people they knew. Alternatively, prisoners could simply examine
their phone messaging. This made the number of victims grow
exponentially.

May we remind you that arrests and murders of LGBT people in
Chechnya were reported by Novaya Gazeta on April 1. The
Newspaper reported on at least 3 such murders and dozens of
abductions. Muftiate members and 2 famous local TV anchors who
had close ties to Kadyrov were among the victims, too. Head of
the Chechen Republic’s Media Relations Officer Alvi Karimov and
Head of the Chechen Republic’s Council on Civil Society and
Human Rights member Heda Saratova refuted the accusations almost
immediately.

oth denied there were either persecution of LGBT people in
Chechnya or LGBT people among Chechens. The 2 stated they do not
tolerate LGBT people, thus making clear what the national stance
on the matter is.

The Chechen government denies all allegations basing their
statement in the belief that LGBTQ people do not exist. “[Y]ou
can’t detain and harass someone who doesn’t exist in the
republic,” they said. “If there were such people in the Chechen
republic, law enforcement wouldn’t have a problem with them
because their relatives would send them to a place of no return.”

Summarizing the reports, Pink News noted:

The camp was reportedly set up by Chechen forces in a former
military headquarters in the town.

The newspaper reports allegations that the Speaker of the
Parliament of Chechnya was among officials to visit the site,
though the claims have not been substantiated.

The detainees face electric shock torture and violent beatings,
while some of them have been held to ransom and used to extort
their families.

Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch released a statement about
the concentration camps saying in part:

For several weeks now, a brutal campaign against LGBT people has
been sweeping through Chechnya.

Law enforcement and security agency officials under control of
the ruthless head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, have
rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, torturing
and humiliating the victims.

Some of the men have forcibly disappeared. Others were returned
to their families barely alive from beatings. At least three men
apparently have died since this brutal campaign began.

These days, very few people in Chechnya dare speak to human
rights monitors or journalists even anonymously because the
climate of fear is overwhelming and people have been largely
intimidated into silence.

Filing an official complaint against local security officials is
extremely dangerous, as retaliation by local authorities is
practically inevitable.

It is difficult to overstate just how vulnerable LGBT people are
in Chechnya, where homophobia is intense and rampant.

LGBT people are in danger not only of persecution by the
authorities but also of falling victim to ‘honour killings’ by
their own relatives for tarnishing family honour.

Chechnya is a federal subject of Russia following the Second
Chechen War and falls under Putin’s direct control –
particularly since he hand-picked and installed Ramzan Kadyrov
as president a decade ago.

Knowing this, it’s no surprise that Chechen violence against gay
men is occurring as Russia is notoriously anti-LGBTQ. The world
saw a glimpse of this not too long ago during the Sochi Olympics.

Under Putin’s regime, LGBTQ people are routinely harassed,
assaulted and murdered based solely on their sexual orientation
and/or gender identity. Popular Russian television actors have
even gone so far as to call for Holocaust-era “solutions” to
LGBTQ people over the last few years.

These attitudes manifested in laws targeting LGBTQ people in
Russia including a 2013 “gay propaganda” law aimed at curbing
civil rights discussion. Just this past week Russia banned
images portraying Putin as a ‘gay clown’.

That animus appears to have been exported to the ultra-
conservative Chechen government.

Former State Department special adviser Paul Goble commented on
the situation writing for Euromaidan Press naming the location
of one of the camps. “The address of at least one of these
concentration camps is known: it is in the former military
headquarters in Argun at 996 Kadyrov Street, symbolic in its
way,” he said.

International Crisis Group project director Ekaterina
Sokirianskaia spoke with The Guardian to confirm at least a
portion of the reports coming out of Chechnya and Russia. “I
have heard about it happening in Grozny [the Chechen capital],
outside Grozny, and among people of very different ages and
professions,” she said.

Sokirianskaia added, “It’s next to impossible to get
information from the victims or their families, but the number
of signals I’m receiving from different people makes it hard not
to believe detentions and violence are indeed happening.”

Reports that the Chechen government is operating at least one or
more concentration camps offer an even darker picture of Russia
and its satellites than initial international reports published
last week and prior portrayed. Add to that the fact that Chechen
human rights officials are refusing – on the record – to
acknowledge the basic human rights of LGBTQ people.

One such official – Kheda Saratova, a man who sits on President
Kadyrov’s human rights council – told a Russian radio station,
“I haven’t had a single request on this issue, but if I did, I
wouldn’t even consider it. ” He added, “In our Chechen society,
any person who respects our traditions and culture will hunt
down this kind of person without any help from authorities, and
do everything to make sure that this kind of person does not
exist in our society.”

This is from a Chechen human rights monitor.

The New York Times described the situation in Chechnya
succinctly:

First, two television reporters vanished. Then a waiter went
missing. Over the past week, men ranging in age from 16 to 50
have disappeared from the streets of Chechnya.

On Saturday, a leading Russian opposition newspaper confirmed a
story already circulating among human rights activists: The
Chechen authorities were arresting and killing gay men.

It began, Novaya Gazeta reported, after a Moscow-based gay
rights group, GayRussia.ru, applied for permits to stage gay
pride parades in four cities in Russia’s predominantly Muslim
North Caucasus region, of which Chechnya is a part.

The group had not focused on the Muslim areas. It had been
applying for permits for gay parades in provincial cities around
Russia, and collecting the inevitable denials, in order to build
a case about gay rights and freedom of assembly with the
European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France. It had
applied to more than 90 municipal governments. Nikolai Alekseev,
a gay rights activist coordinating this effort, told Novaya
Gazeta he had chosen this tactic rather than staging risky,
unsanctioned gay parades.

The group had not applied for a permit in Chechnya, but in
another Muslim region in southern Russia, Kabardino-Balkaria.
The mere application there — denied, as usual — had prompted an
anti-gay counterdemonstration.

In the restive Muslim regions, Mr. Putin has empowered local
leaders to press agendas of traditional Muslim values, to co-opt
an Islamist underground. The gay pride parade applications
became a galvanizing issue.

“In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’
and it went as far as real murders,” Novaya Gazeta reported.

As gay men delete their online profiles and sink further into
the shadows across Russia and its satellites, the world watches
as history attempts to repeat itself. As Mark Twain once said,
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”

Though the current Chechen situation definitely has historical
rhymes, there’s nothing poetic about it.

Tim Peacock
Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock
Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over
twenty years. During that time he’s worn several hats including
leading on campus LGBT advocacy in the University of Missouri
campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights
Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can
learn more about him at his personal website.

http://www.whining-faggots.com

http://www.peacock-panache.com/2017/04/chechnyas-gay- concentration-camp-30692.html

--
Homophobia - Illogical definition coined by a Latin deficient
illiterate liberal.

More correctly, a sexually confused male practicing
homosexuality after first having sex with his own birth mother,
then with a father or brother. Now fearful to engage in the
correct sexual orientation associated with his naturally born
gender.

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