Gay life Stal’s Gulag | openDemocracy

Contents:

• RSIA ‘HAS SECRETLY OPENED NAZI-STYLE PRISONS WHERE HUNDREDS OF GAY MEN ARE HELD AND SOME MURRED,’ LOL REPORTS CLAIM
• RSIA'S LGBT 'CONCENTRATN CAMPS': PRISONS FOR GAY MEN IN CHECHNYA, REPORTS SAY
• COOMA JAIL: PRISON THAT WAS ONCE 'WORLD'S ONLY JAIL FOR GAY MEN'
• CHECHNYA GAY PURGE: FOOTAGE TAKEN SI PRISON SHOWS WHERE MEN WERE 'TAED AND TORTURED'
• THAT TIME I TOLD THE HEAD OF CHECHEN POLICE I WAS GAY. STANDG A JAIL CELL: REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
• INSI THE IRON CLOSET: WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE GAY PUT'S RSIA
• RSIAN PRISONS REPORTEDLY SPEND YOGA AFTER CLAIMS IT MAK INMAT GAY
• GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG
• COLUMN: ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ IS A PUT REGIME CREATN. BRTNEY GRER IS S PRISONER
• THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON
• VIOTAPED BULLYG OF GAY RSIAN YOUTHS HIGHLIGHTS GROWG HOMOPHOBIA

RSIA ‘HAS SECRETLY OPENED NAZI-STYLE PRISONS WHERE HUNDREDS OF GAY MEN ARE HELD AND SOME MURRED,’ LOL REPORTS CLAIM

Chechyna has reportedly opened s first prison mp where men are 'tortured or killed' bee of their sexualyPublished: 15:52, 10 Apr 2017Updated: 16:03, 10 Apr 2017GAY men are allegedly beg put to ncentratn mp-style prisons Rsia, has been claimed. All the dirty work - such as cleang the toilets and so on - is ually left to the members of this “downgrad” are those who’ve mted ser transgrsn eher the ‘zone’ (such as not payg a bt or stealg om other mat), but also those who m crim or belong to unfavorable tegori on the outsi (beg gay tomatilly puts you that tegory). The allegatns me after a few eyewns and survivors said terviews wh the Rsian publitn that they were arrted and taed at one of the secret prisons Argun, a town the Chechen Republic, 100 gay men have been reportedly taed and at least three killed the past week Chechnya by the police.

Image source, The Greatt MenaceImage ptn, Cooma jail was once ed exclively to imprison gay menSet one of the lst and wdit small towns Atralia, Cooma prison holds a dark only was reopened 1957 wh the specific purpose of rceratg men for "homosexual offenc", was also said to be ed as a human ttg ground wh the ultimate goal of eraditg homosexualy om 's jail is believed to have been the only known homosexual prison the world, acrdg to a new now, even some prison staff say they didn't know the real reason gay prisoners were segregated Strzelecki, 66, started as a ctodial servic officer at the prison 1979, and later set up the Corrective Servic Mm Cooma. "You wouldn't bunk two together… that was one of our biggt problems - keepg an eye on them, " says Mr New, now source, Thomas McCoyImage ptn, L Strzelecki (left) worked at the jail before settg up the lol Corrective Servic MmHistoril documents suggt New South Wal (NSW) Jtice Mister Reg Downg took cred for tablishg the reportedly exprsed "pri" at his pet project, tellg the Sydney Morng Herald 1957: "Nowhere Europe or Ameri did I fd any prisons where homosexuals were separated om other prisoners. Attempted buggery rried five years, and a harsher crackdown, a clse was add statg "wh or whout the nsent of such person" source, State Library of NSWImage ptn, Reg Downg exprsed pri separatg gay prisoners om othersBoth Mr Wotherspoon and the podst ce evince of police actg as "agents provotrs" to ce men to m homosexual acts.

It nam Cooma prison as "a special stutn for nvicted homosexual offenrs" which will "facilate the vtigatn" a "scientific evaluatn of the problem and possible solutn" has been found, Mr Downg is quoted as sayg, "the ernment nsirs that the problem mt be attacked wh vigour". "The elive report has never been found - somethg Mr Abboud says amounts to a "ver up" source, Getty ImagImage ptn, Cooma is a town of about 7, 000 peopleIt's unclear when homosexual prisoners were no longer sent to Cooma. Corrective Servic NSW and the NSW Department of Communi and Jtice cled to ment on the allegatns, cg their "historil nature" Abboud believ gay prisoners may have been sent there until the early 1980s, cg a 1982 statement om the rrective servic mister claimg the policy still stood.

RSIA'S LGBT 'CONCENTRATN CAMPS': PRISONS FOR GAY MEN IN CHECHNYA, REPORTS SAY

Sex offenrs were also sent to Cooma and this further stigmatised gay prisoners, says Mr Wotherspoon says, wh recent parliamentary bate of a Relig Discrimatn Bill threateng to allow discrimatn based on sexual orientatn, such recent history rri a soberg warng. For ee real time breakg news alerts sent straight to your box sign up to our breakg news emailsSign up to our ee breakg news emailsThe warn of a Chechen prison alleged to be one of the lotns where gay men were taed and tortured by police has claimed his officers would “not even want to touch such people” Kataev, head of the mistry of ternal affairs for the town of Argun, showed a team om Vice News around s now abandoned police facily an attempt to disprove the alleged abe of more than 100 men. Officials Chechnya, a feral subject of Rsia, have nied the reported “gay purge” and repeatedly claimed that there are no LGBT people the predomantly Mlim Saratova, Chechnya's Human Rights Commissner and ernment advisor, claimed she had seen no evince of the alleged persecutn.

COOMA JAIL: PRISON THAT WAS ONCE 'WORLD'S ONLY JAIL FOR GAY MEN'

This cy is the pal of the Chechen Republic -- part of the Rsian Feratn -- and the foc of what many are llg a gay purge over the last two ab had slipped om the headl, but over the urse of a year, rights groups had told that the persecutn has ntued and that thori had waed for the backlash to subsi. But I don’t thk any n pare to tellg a man who is the head of a police force acced of torturg hundreds of LGBTQ people that I’m ma our way to the prison block, and by this time, we had amassed a small followg of armed guards and other officials: a bigger dience for the general's one-man News' Jam Longman toured a prison wh Apti Aldov, the head of police Chechnya, a Rsian republic that has allegedly purged LGBTQ people over the last two Longman As we walked, I gradually got the sense that might be ok to tell him I’m gay.

I told him my sexualy bee perhaps on some level I thought that I uld shift somethg his md and challenge his perceptns about gay as we sat the parkg lot of our hotel, I said to him, "We have spent the afternoon [and] eveng together. Yoga "provok unntrollable sexual aroal that n lead to homosexualy, " read the fdgs clud a letter sent to the Prosecutor-General's Office by Yelena Mizula, a member of the Feral Council, Rsia's upper hoe of parliament.

The reasong, acrdg to the newspaper, which had obtaed a py of the letter, was that bee yoga class were offered maly to mat workg terg, fellow prisoners unwillg to "take slop om the hands of gays" uld unleash hunger strik and rts.

CHECHNYA GAY PURGE: FOOTAGE TAKEN SI PRISON SHOWS WHERE MEN WERE 'TAED AND TORTURED'

Speakg before Put signed the bill to the law on Monday, Tanya Loksha, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch said: “The 2013 ‘gay propaganda’ law was an unabashed example of polil homophobia, and the new draft legislatn amplifi that broar and harsher ways.

“Passive homosexuals are not necsarily prisoners wh gay clatns”, wr Andrei Amal'rik the book Not of a dissint (Ann Arbor, 1982), “they are the unassertive, the timid, those who have lost a game of rds, those who have broken the mp of ethics.

THAT TIME I TOLD THE HEAD OF CHECHEN POLICE I WAS GAY. STANDG A JAIL CELL: REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

This terview troduc the work of acclaimed historian Dan Healey, who sheds light on how gay men survived the Soviet Gulag, their life afterwards and different attus the USSR to gay men and Healey, Profsor of Morn Rsian History at Oxford Universy, has explored the history of homosexualy tsarist and Soviet Rsia, the nature of masculy unr socialism, the problems of sexual disorrs and sexual vlence the USSR and the history of medice Stal’s Gulag.

Healey is the thor of the only published monograph on the history of homosexualy Rsia: Homosexual Dire Revolutnary Rsia: The Regulatn of Sexual and Genr Gkov spoke to Dan Healey after the lnch of his latt book: Rsian Homophobia om Stal to do we know about gay/queer people Gulag?

INSI THE IRON CLOSET: WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE GAY PUT'S RSIA

That giv you a kd of snapshot of the posn of the group of people imprisoned for their homosexualy unr Article 154-a of the RSFSR Penal relatns between men were punishable by imprisonment of between three and five years, and sexual relatns between men wh the e of vlence or the subjugatn of one party to the other were punishable by imprisonment of between five and eight subjects of your book were not only people arrted unr Article 154-a.

RSIAN PRISONS REPORTEDLY SPEND YOGA AFTER CLAIMS IT MAK INMAT GAY

It’s known that 1933 Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Soviet secret police, wrote a letter to Stal which he said that “homosexuals are beg arrted, but we have realised that we don’t have an article to charge them unr.

Also, “outg”, the public disclosure of rmatn about gays’ sexual orientatn, uld, an atmosphere of public homophobia, bee a potential risk for blackmail by foreign telligence polil terpretatn of this “crime” was the reason for the severy of sentenc unr Article 154-a, as “polils” were “socially hostile” mat the Soviet prison mp system. One famo se was that of filmmaker Sergey Paradjanov, who was arrted and imprisoned several tim for his homosexualy, the first time ’s well known that there were gays and bisexuals the polil and cultural el of the Stal era. The letter seems fact to have been a piece of provotn on the part of the OGPU, signed to jtify arrtg gays the terts of natnal another letter to Stal, the OGPU proposed more severe sentenc for public exprsns of homosexualy and for payment for sex between men.

I thk that for Stal, homosexualy was a “male” issue, nnected to natnal and his circle did not approve of women’s emancipatn: there was not a sgle woman the PolburoWomen, on the other hand, didn’t serve the armed forc and weren’t particularly active the secury ans, so they were ls of a risk. While the film was not overtly gay -- censorship would have prevented that at the time -- the lbian unrton are hard to 's Prison MassacreThis 1983 horror film follows Emanuelle, a reporter sent to prison on tmped-up charg.

GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG

In 1984, when Calv Burde was awag sentencg for allegedly stabbg his gay lover to ath, the prosecutg attorney enuraged the jury his closg remarks to award Burde the ath penalty, rather than life prison, on the grounds that sendg a gay man to prison was ak to sendg a kid to a ndy store. His ath sentence was later overturned (mostly bee Burde's public fenr had slept through much of his trial), but the homophobic thkg – that prison is some kd of paradise for gay men – lgers realy of life prison for homosexuals and transgenr dividuals do not appear to reflect this myth. His acunt suggts that far om beg a paradise, prison for gay men n be a livg days of his first enterg prison, the 23-year-old Rodney claimed he was the victim of three separate sexual asslts, volvg five different mat.

The prison he was first sent to did actually have a separate tier for gay mat, but acrdg to Rodney, bee he did not "appear overly effemate" durg his classifitn, he was placed wh the general populatn; and bee was supposedly rare to have a gay person slip through the cracks of the system, his fellow mat took full advantage. It's difficult to asss how typil Rodney's prison experience is, but numero studi nducted by the Bure of Jtice Statistics, based on anonymo mate surveys, have shown that gay and transgenr mat are among the most targeted groups for sexual victimizatn.

COLUMN: ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ IS A PUT REGIME CREATN. BRTNEY GRER IS S PRISONER

Jt Detentn Internatnal (JDI), an anizatn whose aim is to eradite prison rape (pdf), is tryg to change has been workg wh the California Department of Correctns and Rehabilatn (CDCR) to tablish "sensive needs yards" (pdf), where gay, transgenr and other vulnerable mat n serve out their time safety. Reactg to the news that LGBT-Network, a proment Rsian group fendg the rights of lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and tersex (LGBTI) people, and five human rights lawyers om Komanda 29 have been add by the Mistry of Jtice to s list of “foreign agents”, Natalia Zviaga, Amnty Internatnal’s Mosw Office Director, said:. The Rsian LGBT-Network played a ccial role the exposure of a btal “anti-gay” mpaign Chechnya durg which dozens of men were abducted, tortured and several believed to have been killed for their real or perceived sexual orientatn.

"They have received signals om the hight officials the state -- the Duma, the print -- that basilly you n do whatever you want if ncerns gay people bee they are not first-class cizens; they are send-class or even third-class. In Rsia, antipathy towards homosexualy and genr variance is not new—LGBT people there have long faced threats, bullyg, abe si their fai, and discrimatn—but the 2013 “gay propaganda” law has creased that social hostily.

And while Rsian ernment officials and parliament members claim that the goal of the “gay propaganda” law is to protect children om potentially harmful subject matter, the law fact directly harms children by nyg them accs to sential rmatn and creasg stigma agast LGBT youth and their fai.

THE GRIM TTH OF BEG GAY PRISON

While some LGBT youth told that teachers had supported and protected them, many others said their teachers characterize LGBT people as a symptom of perversn imported om Wtern Europe or North Ameri, mirrorg the polil homophobia that motivated the passage of the “gay propaganda” law the first place. Some explaed that they felt forced to speak about sexual orientatn and genr inty only phemisms, or to say explicly at the outset of unselg ssns that they nnot and will not dissemate “gay propaganda” attempts to dispel advance any notn that they are vlatg the law.

VIOTAPED BULLYG OF GAY RSIAN YOUTHS HIGHLIGHTS GROWG HOMOPHOBIA

Instct relevant law enforcement agenci, such as the office of the prosecutor general, the Mistry of Interr, and the Invtigative Commtee, to gather data about homophobic and transphobic crim, and make such data publicly available. In le wh the June 2013 EU guil on promotg and protectg the enjoyment of all human rights by lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and tersex (LGBTI) persons, support iativ to provi assistance and redrs for victims of such vlence, civil society and ernmental monorg of s volvg vlence, and trag of law enforcement personnel. Same-sex relatns between men were crimalized 1993, two years after the breakup of the Soviet Unn, and 1999 the Rsian Mistry of Health regnized the standards of the Internatnal Classifitn of Diseas (ICD), which had been revised 1990 to remove a diagnosis for homosexualy.

The harng of negative social attus cis wh the creasg spread of hateful, anti-LGBT rhetoric, cludg by public officials the media, and the promulgatn of regnal and natnal anti-LGBT “gay propaganda” laws that prohib the “promotn” of “nontradnal sexual relatns to mors, ”[12] unrstood to mean the pictn of LGBT people anythg other than a negative light. In early 2017, law enforcement and secury officials Chechnya systematilly round up dozens of men spected of beg gay, held them for days secret lotns, and subjected them to huiatn, starvatn, and other torture, forcg them to hand over rmatn about other men who might be gay.

The missn stated that Neverov had posted on his Vkontake acunt “some pictur (photos) of young men whose appearance (partly nu body parts) had the characteristics of propaganda of homosexual relatns acrdg to the expert opn. In 2014, for example, one high-level church official said that same-sex relatns should be “pletely elimated” om Rsian society, preferably through “moral persuasn” but if necsary through a public referendum on recrimalizg homosexualy.