World
100 Gays Reportedly Arrested, Tortured In Russia
The NYT on Friday released a blockbuster story about the growing anti-gay pogrom in Russian Chechnya.
Chechen authorities, who claim that homosexuality doesn’t exist in Chechnya — a popular trope among anti-LGBT regimes — have been arresting and torturing gay men across the region.
One hundred gay men have reportedly been ensnared in the crackdown so far, and three have reportedly died.
The Chechen government, led by the pro-Kremlin Ramzan A. Kadyrov, has adopted a technique used previously by its Russian overlords: They entrap young gays via online chat rooms. When the gay men show up at someone’s apartment for a secret meet-up, they are accosted by the authorities who detain them for anywhere from a day to several weeks. They are then hooked up to electrodes and interrogated.
Vladimir Putin’s government did something similar a few years back, when it allegedly arrested and tortured gay men. The abductions were filmed and then posted on Russian social media, in order to humiliate the men.
The Russian government is however denying that any anti-gay crimes are occurring in Chechnya.
More from the NYT:
In a televised meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday, Mr. Kadyrov characterized as “libelous” news reports that the security services in Chechnya had been persecuting gay men.
And on Thursday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told journalists that the Russian authorities had found no evidence that the Chechen police had arrested gay men.
The Russian government also denied the report of using neo-Nazi gangs to kidnap and torture gay men.
Trump UN ambassador Nikki Haley criticized the Chechen crackdown. Chechnya is a part of Russia.
