Human Rights Watch: Speaker of Chechnya’s parliament present while gays tortured in secret prisons
The Speaker of the Parliament of Chechnya, Magomed Daudov, was personally present when young men detained on suspicion of being gay were tortured in “secret prisons,” read a Human Rights Watch report on the persecution of gays in the republic.
According to two detainees interviewed by human rights activists, Daudov watched as the young men were beaten and humiliated in the prison in Argun and made his own “offensive remarks.”
Another victim said that he had seen Daudov at one of the detention bases in Grozny.
According to the authors of the report, Daudov “played a key role” in organizing the cleansing of gays from the Chechen Republic.
Previously, media outlet Novaya Gazeta had reported on Daudov’s involvement in the persecution of gays in Chechnya, quoting a source that claimed that the February 2017 mass detentions began after Daudov became enraged by the discovery of a “pornogallery” and “correspondence” with gay men on the cellphone of a man arrested for drug-related reasons.
Human Rights Watch notes that the persecution of gays is but a part of the widespread repressive practices existing in Chechnya, in which illegal detentions, torture, and public humiliation are inflicted on a wide range of the republic’s residents, including suspected members of the Islamist armed underground and their relatives.
On April 1, Novaya Gazeta reported that, in February and March 2017, more than 100 people were detained on suspicion of being gay in Chechnya. According to the publication, detainees were kept in secret prisons, tortured, and forced to denounce other gay men; three people were killed. Citing their own sources, Radio Liberty, Meduza, and The Guardian also reported on the persecution of gays in Chechnya. Chechen authorities accused Novaya Gazeta of libel and claimed that there are no homosexuals in the republic.
On April 14, 2017, Novaya Gazeta urged the Russian government to respond to calls for “religious fanatics to massacre journalists” allegedly voiced by Islamic theologians at a meeting convened in the central mosque of Grozny, Chechnya on April 3. The meeting, according to the publication Grozny-Inform, was attended by 15,000 people. According the Novaya Gazeta’s editorial team, the meeting participants adopted a resolution in which they declared that the journalists had “insulted the centuries-old foundations of Chechen society and the dignity of Chechen men,” as well as their faith. The participants also allegedly promised that their offenders would be “subjected to retribution, wherever and whoever they are, without statute of limitations.”
At an April 19 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov described Novaya Gazeta’s articles as “provocative” and insisted that claims of the detention of gay men in Chechnya were untrue. Kadyrov did not specify which articles he was referring to. In the same meeting, Kadyrov mentioned “unconfirmed facts”, the name Khas Tepsurkayev, and pronounced the words: “They said that he was killed, but he is at home.”
Russian LGBT Network reports that over 40 gay men have been evacuated from Chechnya and that some them have already left Russia.