Chechenia gay
Chechnya LGBT: Dozens 'detained in new homosexual purge'
Activists in Russia say there has been a new crackdown against LGBT people in Chechnya.
The Russian LGBT Network believes about 40 people hold been imprisoned since December - two of whom they say have died under torture.
The team has been observing alleged abuses in the mainly Muslim Russian republic since 2017 when dozens of gay people were reportedly detained.
A government spokesman has dismissed their latest report as "complete lies".
Chechnya, and its authoritarian leader Ramzan Kadyrov, has consistently denied allegations of illegal detentions and human rights abuses.
In an interview with the BBC last year, Mr Kadyrov said the allegations were "an invention by foreign agents" or created by activists looking for money.
Homophobia is widespread in the highly conservative and predominantly Muslim Russian republic.
Mr Kadyrov and other government figures have repeatedly claimed Chechnya has no gay population at all.
Despite official denials, dozens possess come forward and alleged they were detained and tortured by authorities because of their sexual orientation.
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Intervening in Chechnya during the anti-gay purge
Maxim Lapunov, Chechen LGBTQI+ Refugee featured in HBO Documentary Welcome to Chechnya
When we first heard about the anti-gay purge in the Russian republic of Chechnya, we immediately started working with the Russian LGBT Network to identify individuals who were targeted.
The purge involved forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by the police, military and state actors. Lgbtq+ men have been identified through online profiles and underground intelligence, and rounded up and tortured for information regarding the identities of other LGTBQI+-identified people.
Hundreds of people have been kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they have been tortured, imprisoned and humiliated for hours—or sometimes weeks—at a second. Many have been raped, beaten and waterboarded, among other atrocities. Some hold been killed or contain disappeared, while others possess been returned to their families after being outed.
Rainbow Railroad was one of the first international organizations on the ground in Russia during the height of the purge. In partnership with numerous international governments, we have relocated more than 70 individual
Amin Dzhabrailov shivered as the cold wind hit his sweat-drenched body. It had been two weeks since he began sleeping on the floor of the tiny, windowless room, but he still wasn’t used to the rush of breeze whenever the door opened at four or five in the morning each day. It was the only chance to freshen the room that reeked of sweat, body odour and tears. He joint the cramped cosmos with 16 — maybe 20 — other men. Their legs were bound together, but they kept their eyes averted; there seemed to be a shared understanding not to look at each other or utter a available word.
On his first day, he was beaten by his captor. Dzhabrailov begged him to block, even calling to God for support, but the dude told him not to use the Lord’s name: he wouldn’t help him anyway, because he wasn’t worthy of mercy. The other men in the room had the same bruises as Dzhabrailov. He knew they all expected to die in this place because he thought he would die, too.
But he didn’t. Two years and more than 8,000 kilometres away from Chechnya, in his fresh home in Toronto, Dzhabrailov recalls those two weeks in captivity. He is one of the few who own come forward to tel
Putin has given Chechnya free rein to persecute LGBTI people
By Natalia Prilutskaya, Russia Researcher at Amnesty International
For the second moment in less than two years, a violent homophobic crackdown has left LGBTI people in Chechnya fearing for their lives. Earlier this week the Russian LGBT Network confirmed reports that the Chechen authorities have resumed large-scale arrests of individuals believed to be homosexual or lesbian, imprisoning and torturing them.
According to the organization’s protected sources, around 40 people have been arrested since December and at least two people have died under torture. Police have also reportedly demanded that families of gay and lesbian people commit “honor” killings against their relatives and provide evidence of their murders.
These appalling reports follow a previous “gay purge” in 2017, which saw hundreds of men detained and tortured and put Chechnya’s dismal human rights tape back in the global spotlight.
I visited the Chechen capital Grozny several times last year. Each day I was struck by the contrast between the shining glass skyscrapers, luxury boutiques and fashionable cafes which line the streets of the city and the
The brutal persecution of LGBTQ in Chechnya
Chechnya – Repression – LGBTQ
From 2017 to 2020, Chechen security forces arrested, imprisoned and tortured more than 150 people. Most were gay or bisexual men. The underlying issue is that, according to the government, these men undertake not correspond to the heterosexual image of masculinity in Chechnya. As a result, they are systematically persecuted.
Because these crimes involved by the Chechen government have not addressed at the national level, ECCHR and its partner Sphere Foundation/Russian LGBT Network filed a lawsuit in Germany in February 2021. However, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office has not yet opened any investigation proceedings focusing on individual persons, but continues to monitor the situation in an observational capacity.
Case
For many years, the civilian population in the Chechen Autonomous Republic has suffered from severe human rights violations by government forces. Most recently, particularly LGBTQ people were deliberately targeted, meaning people whose gender, gender identity or sexual orientation deviate from the two-part, heterosexual gender division. Since Russia refuses to investigate these