BY EMMA RUBIN ’20
On April 1, Novaya Gazeta an investigative Russian newspaper, published an article revealing that the local government of Chechnya, Russia has been taking homosexual men into custody to be tortured in a Chechen prison.
Chechnya is located in the North Caucasus region of Russia, a predominantly Muslim area. Authorities identified local men who identified as homosexual by soliciting fake profiles on traditionally male homosexual dating sites, Novaya Gazeta reported.
Evidence in the exposé revealed that 100 people had been detained, at least threeof whom were executed. The newspaper also suggested that non-authorized murders had been committed by relatives in what are referred to as “honor killings.” Honor killings occur when the accused are returned to their families due to a lack of evidence regarding their sexuality, then killed by relatives who believe they have brought shame to the family.
Authorities of the city deny the claims, and aspokesman for the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, asserted that there are no gay people in Chechnya, according to the New York Times. “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the Republic,” Kadyrov said.
The Guardian conducted an interview with a victim of the torture who said that he thought he had received a phone call from a friend to meet. Instead he encountered six men who yelled at him, accusing him of being a homosexual. After being transported by van to a facility, he said, “they woke us up at 5 a.m. and let us sleep at 1 a.m. Different people would come in and take turns to beat us.”
The Russian LGBT Network established a hotline on March 29 to offer assistance evacuating people who are at risk in the region. The organization claims to have already received 50 calls from people still in the area and also from people who have escaped and are in need of further assistance. The inter-regional Network states that its main goals are “to evacuate people whose lives are still in danger, to attract as much attention to the cause as possible and to collect the evidence about the mass homicide of homosexuals in Chechnya.”
Tips to the Network claim that up to 30 victims are locked in a room together and suffer from electric shock, beatings with a hose and improper nutritional care. They are reportedly tortured to extract the names of other homosexual men in the area.
A five-person panel comprised of experts from the UN has specifically called the actions “acts of persecution and violence on an unprecedented scale in the region.” The group advises the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, according to the New York Times.
Sydney Vaughan ’17 is a Russian and Eurasian studies and politics double major and isco-president of the Russian club. She has personally studied the Chechen region for many years and said that “traditional Chechen culture and what is currently being depicted are two different things.” She recognized that, historically, Chechnya has not been a region of extremist, saying that “a lot of these more traditional structures were imposed by Russia,” with reference to the way that the Chechen wars have affected the culture and stability of the region.
She also acknowledged the close relationship between Chechen leader Kadyrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Because of this relationship, Vaughan doubts that Russia will condemn the situation. She instead suggested that Russia will likely attempt to discredit the human rights abuses that are occurring. “I think it is highly likely that we’re going to see the presentation of what has gone down as if these men were enemies of the state in some capacity,” she said that the implication will be that “they were doing something else which landed them in a prison-like environment.”
In Russia there is currently more indifference toward the female LGBTQ presence than male. “It is less scrutinized and attacked in that sense versus being a man,” Vaughan explained, noting the traditional Russian idea of how a man should behave. Vaughan shared her fears that the situation will misrepresent true Chechen culture, “I always get really concerned when things like this happen, that there is going to be a lot of negative and immediate backlash against various cultures, various communities and various dissident groups.”