Usg classic K.G.B. tactics, secury officers lured gay men to traps and tortured them to givg up the inti of others like them.
Contents:
- INSI CHECHNYA’S GULAG FOR GAY MEN
- 'ANY DAY YOU N BE TAKEN': INSI WHAT 'S LIKE TO BE GAY CHECHNYA
- ‘THEY STARVE YOU. THEY SHOCK YOU’: INSI THE ANTI-GAY POGROM CHECHNYA
- RSIA VTIGAT 'GAY PURGE' CHECHNYA
INSI CHECHNYA’S GULAG FOR GAY MEN
They started accg me, ‘you’re gay, ’ ‘you were talkg to a woman about homosexualy. “They tried to beat the rmatn out of me, askg me about other gay men I’d never spoken to and never met.
I didn’t want them to thk I was gay eher. Rsian gay rights activist Nika Saonov pos ont of a police partment as he is released after beg taed central Mosw for havg llected two ln signatur on a petn llg for a probe to a reported crackdown on Chechnya’s LGBT muny. Cooperatn, he explaed, meant workg wh the thori to meet gay men onle, lure them to an apartment wired wh surveillance equipment, and then turn them .
The worst place the world to be gay? “All those who fend human rights groups and the gays we supposedly have the Chechen Republic are foreign agents, ” Kadyrov blasted an terview wh the BBC 2018.
'ANY DAY YOU N BE TAKEN': INSI WHAT 'S LIKE TO BE GAY CHECHNYA
“I don’t thk the thori Chechnya try to mask that there’s open hostily to people who are gay or believed to be gay. It’s no surprise then that there have been numero anti-gay pogroms, ” said Rachel Denber, puty director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. “There have been s when such allegatns [of homosexualy] were ed by the secury forc as threats or to jtify their illegal actns.
Ricky-- a psdonym-- had known he was gay sce his early teens but had almost never dated. "They said would be better if I was a terrorist than gay.
"Ricky's oral was mid-2018 and was a faiar early 2017, the world had beme aware of reports that Chechen thori were roundg up and torturg dozens of men they spected of beg gay, what me to be known as a "gay purge". Nor did beg January 2018 Rsian LGBT activists reported a h wave of tentns, this time also volvg gay women.
‘THEY STARVE YOU. THEY SHOCK YOU’: INSI THE ANTI-GAY POGROM CHECHNYA
The nam of most of those terviewed have been changed at their requt out of ncern the Chechen thori or their fai might harm acunts pat a picture of a place where there is now virtually no space to be gay, where datg rri potentially lethal nsequenc and the supprsn of their inty is obligatory for LGBT people. He has done that, g allegedly savage methods, and the procs Kadyrov has remolled Chechnya around himself, erectg a police state and a cult of personaly built around an obssive machismo centered on sport, particularly martial the majory-Mlim regn, wh a eply nservative culture, beg gay was never accepted.
"It is a dictatorship, " said Harlem, who fled Chechnya several years ago and now ns LGBT World Bi, an NGO that tri to help gay people leave the Cs. "In 2017, that nservative hostily to homosexualy seemed to nvert to anised terror, part of a broar nservative mpaign that has also targeted dg and alhol Dzhabrailov, 27, only the send man to e forward publicly about his tentn 2017, told ABC News that armed police took him om the hair salon where he was workg. For 14 days, he said, he was held a basement wh several other gay men, taken out for torture ssns, where he was electrocuted and subjected to a mock Dzhabrailov tells ABC News'' Jam Longman the torture and terrogatn he says he endured at the hands of Chechen News"They put me on the wall, put bag on my head, " he remembered.
RSIA VTIGAT 'GAY PURGE' CHECHNYA
They scribed active attempts to hunt down gay men g rmants and surveillance. They said the people who tortured them would mand they nam other gay men. 'For , ’s crazy that someone among might be gay'Chechen thori have dismissed the allegatns as vented.