Anti-gay purges in Chechnya, a part of the Russian Federation, have included forced disappearances, secret abductions, imprisonment, torture and extrajudicial killing by authorities targeting persons based on their perceived sexual orientation, primarily gay men. At least 2 of the 100 people, whom authorities detained on suspicion of being gay or bisexual, have reportedly died after being held in what human rights groups and eyewitnesses have called concentration camps.
Allegations were initially reported on 1 April 2017 in Novaya Gazeta, a Russian-language opposition newspaper, which reported that since February 2017 over 100 men had allegedly been detained and tortured and at least three had died in extrajudicial killings. The paper, citing its sources in the Chechen special services, called the wave of detentions a "prophylactic sweep". The journalist who first reported on the subject went into hiding. There have been calls for reprisals against journalists who report on the situation.
As news spread of Chechen authorities' actions, which have been described as part of a systematic anti-LGBTQ purge, Russian and international activists scrambled to evacuate survivors of the camps and other vulnerable Chechens but were met with difficulty obtaining visas to conduct them safely beyond Russia.
The reports of the persecution were met with a variety of reactions worldwide. The Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov denied not only the occurrence of any persecution but also the existence of gay men in Chechnya, adding that such people would be killed by their own families. Officials in Moscow were skeptical, although in late May the Russian government reportedly agreed to send an investigative team to Chechnya. Numerous national leaders and other public figures in the West condemned Chechnya's actions, and protests were held in Russia and elsewhere. A report released in December 2018 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) confirmed claims that persecution of LGBT persons had taken place and was ignored by authorities. In a 2021 Council of Europe report into anti-LGBTI hate crimes, rapporteur Foura ben Chikha described the "state-sponsored attacks carried out against LGBTI people in Chechnya in 2017" as "the single most egregious example of violence against LGBTI people in Europe that has occurred in decades".
On 11 January 2019, it was reported that another 'gay purge' had begun in the country in December 2018, with several gay men and women being detained. The Russian LGBT Network believes that around 40 people were detained and two killed.
Though some men have fled Chechnya, and in some cases have received status in the countries where they moved, Chechen agents have pursued them out of the region. In some instances, false accusations have been made to prosecute the detainees.
In September 2022, Chechen authorities detained at least six men on suspicion of being gay, threatening them with fabricated criminal charges and coercing them into signing military contracts to fight in Ukraine. According to the North Caucasus SOS Crisis Group, at least seven such cases were confirmed, one of whom was subsequently killed at the front. Similar detentions continued into 2023, when four men and one woman were detained; the men were again forcibly sent to fight in Ukraine.
On 30 November 2023, Russia's Supreme Court declared the "international LGBT movement" an extremist organization, effectively banning all LGBT rights activism in the country. The ruling was condemned by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, who warned it exposed LGBT people and their defenders to criminal prosecution carrying sentences of up to ten years.
Background
The status of LGBT rights in the Chechen Republic has long been a cause of concern to human rights organizations (including Amnesty International) and it has also been described as being "especially bleak" within the Russian Federation as a whole. It was also singled out for criticism by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International before the 2017 crackdown. Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim, ultra-conservative society in which homophobia is widespread and homosexuality is taboo, and where having a gay relative is seen as a "stain on the entire extended family".
The federal Russian LGBT laws apply in Chechnya, which is a part of the Russian Federation. However, in Chechnya, as in other regions of southern Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin "has empowered local leaders to enforce their interpretation of traditional values, partly in an effort to co-opt religious extremism, which has largely been driven underground".
Although homosexuality was legalized in Russia in 1993, in 1996 Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov adopted sharia law in his Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, and article 148 of the Chechen penal code made all "sodomy" punishable by caning after the first two offenses and punishable by execution after the third offense. Chechnya returned to direct Russian rule in 2000, formally complying with its federal laws and human right statutes. De facto, it retains some autonomy, and the current Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, "has brought Islam to the fore of Chechnya's daily life, and gay people who reveal their sexuality are often discriminated against and shunned by their families".
Key events
Large-scale raids and killings The detentions began in February 2017 after a Chechen man who had allegedly committed a drug-related offense was stopped by police and arresting officers discovered contact information for other gay men on his phone.
A second wave of detentions began after the LGBT rights organization Gayrussia.ru applied for permits to hold gay pride parades in four cities within Kabardino-Balkaria in Russia's predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, although not within Chechnya itself. The application in this district was denied by the Kabardino-Balkar authorities. An anti-gay demonstration followed, along with posts on social media calling for gay people to be murdered by various methods.
Gayrussia.ru organizer Nikolay Alexeyev dismissed suggestions that attempts to organize pride parades in the region had sparked the violence against gay Chechens as speculative and unfounded. The organization had not focused on the Muslim districts in particular, and it had applied for permits for gay pride parades in 90 municipal governments all across Russia in an attempt to collect the inevitable denials, which would be used in a case about freedom of assembly and gay rights before the European Court of Human Rights.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2017 that "it is difficult to overstate just how vulnerable LGBT people are in Chechnya, where homophobia is intense and rampant. LGBT people are in danger not only of persecution by the authorities but also of falling victim to 'honour killings' by their own relatives for tarnishing family honor." Kadyrov has encouraged extrajudicial killings by family members as an alternative to law enforcement – in some cases, gay men in prison have been released early specifically to enable their murder by relatives.
The Chechen police and military have conducted entrapment schemes, in which a victim is lured on a date, beaten and humiliated. A recording is produced, and blackmail money is solicited in return for silence. Law enforcement agencies in Chechnya already keep lists of "suspects". According to a source from Radio Liberty, raids on gay people began in December 2016, subsided briefly, and resumed on a large scale in February 2017. The first gay men who were detained via entrapment were tortured in attempts to reveal the names of their acquaintances.
All of the correspondence in their phones was checked, adding to the "suspect" list. This resulted in the number of victims growing exponentially. According to Novaya Gazeta, at the end of February, the police detained and checked the phone of a person who was in a state of intoxication. The phone had "pictures and videos with explicit content" and "dozens of contacts of local homosexuals". The detainee was sent to a "secret prison". Subsequently, a "wave of persecution" began in Chechnya as an attempt to purge the country of those who are homosexual or are perceived to be homosexual. Chechen police are reportedly pressuring parents in the region to kill their children who they suspect of being homosexual. To facilitate this, police have reportedly been releasing detainees into the custody of their families and outing them.
Imprisonment and torture According to independent media and human rights groups, gay men are sent to clandestine camps in Chechnya, which one eyewitness described to Novaya Gazeta as a "closed prison, the existence of which no one officially knows". Around 100 men have been imprisoned and at least three people have already died. Some of the guards in these allegedly unofficial jails are accused of releasing the prisoners to their relatives if their relatives promise to kill them (at least one man was reported by a witness as having died after returning to his family). One location of a secret prison is allegedly in the southern city of Argun. Another prison is located in Tsotsin-Yurt, south of the Chechen capital Grozny.
According to escapees interviewed in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the British-owned The Guardian, 30 to 40 people are detained in one room (two to three metres big), and often kept for months on end without trial. Witnesses report they are also beaten (with polypropylene pipes below the waist), and tortured with electricity. In addition to physical torture, individuals report being mocked, humiliated and insulted, as well as being forced to clean the prison and spat in the face. In some cases the process of torture ends in the death of the person being tortured.
In May 2017, it was reported that the building in Argun had been buried under demolition rubble and that prisoners had been moved to a new, unknown location. Investigators say that prisoners are likely to have been moved to a Special Police Force training base in Terek, about 60 in Argun, but they have been denied entry, because "training is taking place".
Media's attention The persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya beginning in early 2017 is "particularly well documented." Human Rights Watch has confirmed that authorities have "rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay and that they are currently torturing and humiliating the victims. Some of the men have forcibly disappeared. At least three men have died since this brutal campaign began." An investigation by Radio Liberty in April 2017 reported that prisoners are being released to their families if their families promise to murder them.
A lengthy analysis published on 26 May by Human Rights Watch reported the presence of leading government officials at the camps while detainees were being tortured. The report, which includes graphic descriptions of the ordeals faced by several survivors of the camps, suggested that several victims of the camps were still being detained at the time of its publication.
In June, a journalist with VICE News visited a now-abandoned detention center in Argun believed to be the site of one of the camps, and interviewed the local minister of internal affairs, who also acts as prison warden. The warden denied that abuse had taken place, and said, "My officers would not even want to touch such people, if they exist, let alone beating or torturing them". Shown footage of the detention center, a man who described being electrocuted by his captors identified it as the site where he was held, and also identified the warden as one of his tormentors.