Legitimate sacrifices

A new wave of persecution of Chechen gays began on the initiative of ordinary Chechen police officers who extorted money for a sexual orientation banned in the republic

On Monday, the Russian LGBT network human rights organization extended an application for a new wave of persecution of men and women in Chechnya on suspicion of non-traditional sexual orientation. The data on the number of victims - the detainees and the dead - “New Gazeta”, voiced by human rights activists, was able to confirm through their own sources. Moreover, this time the newspaper journalists took part in the evacuation of representatives of the Chechen LGBT community from the republic.

The information that comes to journalists and human rights activists from victims and from other sources needs a thorough verification. Due to the exceptional closure of Chechnya, this check may take a lot of time (for example, in 2017, Novaya journalists tested information about the wake of persecution for more than three weeks, subsequently all the facts set forth in the publications found their confirmation during the pre -investigation).

Only a huge resonance then stopped the large -scale stripping of gays in Chechnya, and only publicity can protect people in this region.

Therefore, human rights activists of the Russian LGBT network decided to report information about the new “wave” immediate publicity and simultaneously continue to collect information about the victims.

The analysis of the information received does not yet give grounds for allegations that this time the Chechen security officials centrally executed the order from above. Most likely, the new “wave” of persecution began with several cases of banal extortion, that is, at the initiative of ordinary Chechen police officers.

The first reports of the victims of the new “wave” of persecution Russian human rights activists began to receive at the end of 2018. So, it became known about the detention in Grozny a group of men and women who were beaten and tortured at one of the operational apartments. Such apartments of Chechen police are usually used for fishing "for live bait." They are equipped with video cameras, lure the victims there and blackmail them with compromising evidence, extorting money. This practice was previously widespread in the republic, but it rarely came to murders. Only in February 2017, gay hunting in Chechnya took the form of a large -scale campaign authorized on top, the ideological basis for which was repeatedly publicly publicly voiced by the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov about the “purification of Chechen blood from perverts”.

At the beginning of this year, the chairman of the “Civil Assistance” committee Svetlana Gannushkina came a request for help from people whose son was detained on suspicion of homosexual orientation and delivered to one of the Grozny police department (which new newspaper is known). Parents categorically denied the homosexuality of their son, but they said that the police demanded 1 million rubles for the release of their son. Relatives first asked human rights activists about legal assistance, but subsequently did not get in touch. Apparently, they decided to pay the ransom, at least it is known for sure that the detainee was released.

After the holidays, information about the further and already mass detention of men in Chechnya began to come from - they came from the victims of the former campaign taken from the republic and from Russia.

Sources associated these facts with the detention of the administrator of one of the “thematic” groups in VKontakte (the name and surname are known to the “Novaya Gazeta”), which, apparently, came out along the chain: its contact was at a large number of representatives of the Chechen LGBT community. The situation was repeated, similar to the one that gave rise to the previous campaign - then, on suspicion of using the psychotropic drug "Lyrika", the police detained the resident of Argun Zelimkhan Obarkhanov, and then in his phone they found an extensive contact base of Chechen gays. Now the source of information about the representatives of the Gay community has become the administrator of the group in VKontakte.

Unfortunately, despite a serious threat, which is still extremely relevant for the region, representatives of the Chechen LGBT community continue to actively use social networks for communication.

Their groups in the Chechen Internet segment are numerous, very frank and exclusively vulnerable, confirmation of which are the latest events.

It can be confidently argued that representatives of the Chechen LGBT community did not remove lessons from the previous campaign and are not ready to take even elementary steps to their salvation in case of an obvious threat. They still do not know or do not trust human rights organizations that may help in an emergency, are not able to make quick decisions and do not dare to leave the republic even in a situation where their close acquaintances are detained or even killed. Such victimized behavior, but the main thing is the fact that Russian law enforcement agencies cover crimes committed in Chechnya on the motive for hatred for representatives of the LGBT community are unconditional prerequisites for the recurrence of mass persecution.

"New" monitors the development of the situation.