Translated material
“Novaya Gazeta”: in Chechnya, more than a hundred men were detained for homosexuality, three were killed
According to Novaya Gazeta, more than a hundred men have been detained in Chechnya in recent weeks, whom the security forces suspected of being homosexual. The publication writes that this information was confirmed by "an unprecedented large number of sources", including interlocutors in the local departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, in the prosecutor's office and the administration of the republic.
Novaya Gazeta emphasizes that those detained on suspicion of homosexuality have “extremely little chance of surviving,” since relatives will not seek an investigation into their detention or murder. The article reports the deaths of at least three people; their names are known to the editors of Novaya Gazeta, but are not mentioned.
The paper also cites a post by an anonymous LGBT activist from Chechnya who warns of fake posts to expose local gays. The author of the entry claims that many of the men who responded to such posts were killed.
“Among the detainees are representatives of the Chechen muftiate, including well-known, influential and close to the head of the republic religious figures, as well as two well-known Chechen TV presenters,” reports Novaya Gazeta.
Sources in the local security services linked the detentions (“preventive sweeps”) to LGBT activists from other regions filing notifications of actions in the cities of the North Caucasus, which provoked protests and an aggressive reaction.
As in other Russian cities, these actions were not coordinated; The Novaya Gazeta article admits that the purpose of the notifications was to obtain a refusal in order to later appeal it to the European Court of Human Rights.
GayRussia.ru project manager Nikolai Alekseev, when asked by Novaya Gazeta about the connection between the filing of applications and the persecution of LGBT activists in the Caucasus, said that the journalist “speculates with unverified information, operates with unfounded facts, and he personally has nothing to say about such persecution and the consequences of his actions known."
Novaya Gazeta is preparing a statement to the TFR and the Prosecutor General's Office, as well as to the administration of the President of the Russian Federation. We intend to provide the investigation with the personal data (name, place of work, place of residence) of the killed and demand the initiation of a criminal case, since only within the framework of a criminal case is it possible to conduct an exhumation to establish the exact cause of death of people.