Chechnya has launched a brutal crackdown on gays. Hundreds of homosexual and bisexual men have been targeted in the Muslimdominated Russian region in a pogrom condemned by the UN
A sin in Islam’
Russian LGBT activists have helped Chechnya’s gays find refuge in other parts of the country. While casual homophobia is common elsewhere in Russia too, the problem is particularly acute in conservative Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas where homosexuality is taboo. “This society is highly homophobic. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin,” the New York Times quoted Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, an expert on Chechnya, as saying
Putin’s tacit assent?
In the 1990s, there was a powerful separatist movement in Chechnya where nearly 95 per cent of the people follow Islam. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin put an end to it and later installed Ramzan Kadyrov as the head of the region. Kadyrov’s regime is currently persecuting the region’s gays
Activists have accused Russia of turning a blind eye, to “co-opt Islamist extremism”. Tanya Lokshina of HRW told AFP that it would “only take a call from the Kremlin to Kadyrov for the arrests to stop”
‘No homosexuals here’
Kadyrov’s spokesman claimed such treatment was impossible since gays do not exist there. “In Grozny, have you ever noticed people who, by their appearance or manners, resemble people who are oriented in the wrong way?” he told NYT