{"id":7092,"date":"2017-04-22T15:16:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T09:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=7092"},"modified":"2017-04-22T15:16:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T09:31:31","slug":"they-starve-you-they-shock-you-inside-the-anti-gay-pogrom-in-chechnya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/they-starve-you-they-shock-you-inside-the-anti-gay-pogrom-in-chechnya\/","title":{"rendered":"They Starve You. They Shock You\u2019: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya"},"content":{"rendered":"
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GROZNY, Russia (Pahichan) April 22\u2014 It was supposed to be a night out. But for the young man who calls himself Maksim, as for scores of other gay men arrested in a pogrom this month in Russia\u2019s Chechnya<\/a> region, it pivoted into nearly two weeks of beatings and torture.<\/p>\n

Maksim said it had started with a chat room conversation with \u201ca very good old friend who is also gay,\u201d and who suggested that they meet at an apartment. When Maksim arrived, however, he was greeted not by his friend but by agents who beat him. Later, they strapped him to a chair, attached electrical wires to his hands with alligator clips and began an interrogation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey yelled, \u2018Who else do you know?\u2019\u201d Maksim said, and zapped him with current from time to time. \u201cIt was unbearably painful; I was hanging on with my last strength,\u201d he added. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t tell them anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gay men have never had an easy life in Chechnya. But the targeted, collective punishment of gays that began last month under its pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, is a new turn in the region\u2019s long history of rights abuses.<\/p>\n

After arriving at the safe location outside Chechnya, several young men said they had suspected that the volunteer group was also a trap but had no other option but to accept the help, Ms. Baranova said. \u201cThey say, \u2018We didn\u2019t believe you were real,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201c\u2018We thought this was the last effort to round up whoever was left.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, first reported<\/a> the pogrom, saying that at least 100 gay men had been arrested and three killed in the roundup. Human Rights Watch corroborated<\/a> those findings.<\/p>\n

The sweep has been widely condemned by Western governments, the United Nations and rights groups. Activists in Russia have set up an underground network to spirit the victims out of Chechnya and to protect them from potentially violent reprisals from their families and others. The victims use assumed names in their everyday dealings.<\/p>\n

The following account is based on interviews with Maksim, who is in his 20s, and two other gay men who were detained by Chechen security agents.<\/p>\n

Homosexuality is taboo in Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas of the Caucasus region in southern Russia. \u201cThis society is highly homophobic,\u201d said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group and an authority on Chechnya. \u201cHomosexuality is condemned. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, before the crackdown, gay men in Chechnya could at least lead social lives, if heavily closeted ones, Maksim said. They met largely in private chat rooms on social networking sites with names like the Village or What the Mountains Are Silent About.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen two gay men meet, they don\u2019t tell one another their true names,\u201d Maksim said. Men met at cafes or at apartments rented for a night, he said. \u201cNobody suspected my sexual orientation, not even my best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crackdown began<\/a> after GayRussia<\/a>, a rights group based in Moscow, applied for permits for gay pride parades in the Caucasus region, prompting counterprotests by religious groups, the men said. In Chechnya, it became something even worse \u2014 a mass \u201cprophylactic\u201d cleansing of homosexuals, the security service agents told the gay men as they rounded them up.<\/p>\n

Photo<\/span><\/p>\n
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Olga Baranova, director of the Moscow Community Center, a support group for gays that is part of the volunteer network helping gay men flee Chechnya.<\/span> Credit<\/span>James Hill for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The men were held for as little as a day or as long as several weeks, according to Human Rights Watch and to interviews with gay men who later escaped the region. Some \u201creturned to their families barely alive from beatings,\u201d said Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director for Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

Among the fatalities documented by the organization were one man who succumbed during torture and two others who died in \u201chonor killings\u201d by relatives after the police released them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman Rights Watch has been getting numerous reports about attacks by security services under Ramzan Kadyrov\u2019s control, and those reports are extremely disturbing,\u201d Ms. Lokshina said. \u201cThis is another opportunity to reinforce the culture of fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chechen authorities\u2019 response to the global outrage over the pogrom has provoked new incredulity. In a telephone interview, Mr. Kadyrov\u2019s spokesman, Alvi Karimov, said the reports of an anti-gay pogrom had to be false because such men did not exist in Chechnya.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Grozny, have you ever noticed people who, by their appearance or manners, resemble people who are oriented in the wrong way?\u201d Mr. Karimov asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cA policy is developed for a problem,\u201d he said, referring to a report that said the arrests were official policy. \u201cI can officially say there is no policy because there is no problem. If there were a problem, there would be a policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a televised meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday, Mr. Kadyrov characterized as \u201clibelous\u201d news reports that the security services in Chechnya had been persecuting gay men.<\/p>\n