In my FB feed today there are LOTS of posts about gays being imprisoned and otherwise persecuted in Chechyna. What is actually happening?
I’ve been hearing about this recently, too. So far, reports but nothing confirmed. However, this is chilling:
The source of this story appears to be a Russian LGBT advocacy network that then had an article in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Certainly many respectable media outlets are taking the claims of concentration camps and torture seriously eg:
Of course the Chechnyan government is going to deny this. Given Ramzan Kadyrov’s reputation and past documented uses of torture and extra-judicial killings, I’d say the existence of the camps is highly plausible, but barring some under cover expose with hidden camera’s we’re not really likely to know 100 percent are we?
I have read the reports in Novaya Gazeta, which is one of the very few remaining independent newspapers in Russia. (Anna Politkovskaya, the courageous journalist who was murdered more than ten years ago, wrote for NG.) The reports of mass arrests, torture, and murder all seem based on reliable accounts. None of it is surprising, given the state of hostility toward the LGBT community in contemporary Russia.
I could say a lot more, but I’m aware this question was posted in GQ so I’ll refrain from political commentary that might be better suited elsewhere.
I pitted the Chechens about this recently and quoted this story from Buzzfeed about the rounding up of gays by the Chechen authorities who were then either ‘disappeared’ or released to their families in the hopes that they would kill them (and tragically it seems many families would oblige only too gladly).
It’s sickening.