The Arrests (40) and Deaths Commencing Again in Chechnya Which is Putin’s Sandbox to Practice Invasion
Forty men and women have been detained and at least two have died in an anti-gay purge in Russia's Chechnya republic that is even more brutal than a 2017 crackdown, according to activists.
After the administrator of an LGBT social media group was detained in December, Chechen law enforcement began rounding up suspected homosexuals, LGBT Network said on Monday. It is holding people without charge in an infamous prison where gay men have previously said they were tortured, local residents told activists.
One of the captives died after officials repeatedly cut him with a knife during an interrogation, Igor Kochetkov of LGBT Network told The Telegraph.
“We can already say that the torture being suffered by those detained is savage, much worse than for those detained in 2017,” he said. “We know of two dead, but probably more have been killed.”
For the first time, women are also being systematically detained for presumed homosexuality, he added.
A gay man named Alexander who escaped Chechnya for France told the Russian news site Meduza that 10 people had actually been killed in the latest wave of the anti-LGBT “genocide,” and a friend who was imprisoned had seen bodies being carried away.
A post in a local LGBT social media group last week told gay people to “run from the republic as soon as possible”.
More than 100 were rounded up and at least six died in a crackdown on gay men in the predominantly Muslim republic in 2017. Some were handed over to relatives with the expectation they would be finished off in an “honor killing,” while others had to sign blank criminal charges for possible future use.
LGBT Network has helped 150 people flee since 2017.
Ramzan Kadyrov
Ramzan Kadyrov became the leader of Chechnya, a war-torn republic of 1.4 million people in the Caucasus mountains, in 2007, taking over after his father was assassinated in a bomb blast. The two Kadyrovs had fought against Russian forces for Chechnya's independence in the 1990s but defected to Moscow's side during the second Chechen War.
Accused of kidnappings and extrajudicial executions, Ramzan has stamped out dissent and a simmering Islamist insurgency with often brutal methods. At the same time, he has turned Chechnya into an increasingly conservative Muslim society.
He is seen to have carte blanche from the Kremlin, receiving generous federal funding and a free hand within Chechnya in exchange for keeping the insurgency at bay. Kadyrov's ostentatious displays of loyalty to Vladimir Putin included having thousands of his security forces pledge themselves as “foot soldiers” of the president.
One of Kadyrov's security officers gunned down opposition politician Boris Nemtsov outside the Kremlin in 2015.
The press secretary of Chechnya's strongman ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, who was appointed by Vladimir Putin in 2007, called the latest accusations “lies and disinformation”.
Kadyrov has previously claimed there are no gay men in Chechnya and told the BBC during the World Cup that the reports of the purge were “all made up”.
“The reason this is being repeated is impunity,” Mr Kochetkov said. “The Russian authorities didn't open a criminal case, and Kadyrov felt this impunity.”
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe in December called on Russia to open an inquiry “in view of the clear evidence of successive purges against LGBTI persons” in Chechnya.
It also called for a criminal investigation into the case of Maxim Lapunov, a gay man who told The Telegraph and others that he was held for 12 days in Chechnya and tortured in 2017.
Police beat him until he couldn't stand, demanding the names of other gay men, he said. Others were tortured with electric shocks.
Mr. Lapunov, an ethnic Russian, was released when relatives from another region came looking for him, but police threatened him to keep quiet.
Russian authorities have repeatedly refused to investigate his complaints. Mr. Putin's human rights ombudswoman said last month a criminal case had not been opened because Mr. Lapunov had left Russia for Estonia. He fled there fearing for his safety.
Police have now been hunting down contacts from the phones of the administrator of the LGBT social media group and subsequent people they detained, according to Mr Kochetkov.
Some have been released, but in a new development, their passports were ripped up to keep them from leaving Chechnya, he said.
“If we don't stop this now it could develop further, so it's very important to spread this information and put pressure on Moscow,” he said.
Human rights groups and the British government have also called on Moscow to take action against the repressions in Chechnya, where Mr. Kadyrov wields absolute power over a fearful populace.
Last year, police began detaining teenagers en masse after five boys pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and were killed in attacks on police, The Telegraph reported. Other young people have been imprisoned on extremely flimsy terrorism accusations, and 27 were killed without trial in a mass execution in January 2017, according to an investigation by Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
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