'We were beaten, detained and tortured for being gay'

Anzor is a gay man who spoke to the Associated Press on condition that he not be further identified out of fear for his safety and that of his family. He is from Chechnya, the predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia where some 100 men suspected of being gay were detained and tortured, and at least three of them were killed. File photo: Nataliya Vasilyeva/AP

Anzor is a gay man who spoke to the Associated Press on condition that he not be further identified out of fear for his safety and that of his family. He is from Chechnya, the predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia where some 100 men suspected of being gay were detained and tortured, and at least three of them were killed. File photo: Nataliya Vasilyeva/AP

Published Jun 15, 2017

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Moscow - Two men from Chechnya have told

Reuters they were detained by police and subjected to torture

and beatings because they were gay, which is considered a crime

by some in their deeply conservative region of Russia.

The two have since fled mainly Muslim Chechnya, but they

still fear being hunted down and persecuted. They spoke to

Reuters on condition that their real names were not used, and

their voices and faces disguised.

One of the men, who gave his name as Anzor, said he had been

detained by police as he was driving in the company of other men

from a Chechen village to the Caucasus region's capital Grozny

in February.

"They found some medicine on one of the guys," he told

Reuters Television. Seeing his rings and bracelets, the

policemen asked if he was "a faggot" and beat him severely, the

man said in an interview.

"Then they ... forced me to tie a cable to my little toe and

to my little finger. I was forced to do it myself, to attach the

wires. And then they started using electric shocks," he said.

The accounts that the two men gave could not be

independently verified by Reuters. They fit in, however, with a

pattern of persecution described by other sources.

Chechnya's Moscow-backed president Ramzan Kadyrov denies

human rights are routinely flouted in the region. His spokesman

has said there could be no attacks on gay men because there were

no such people in Chechnya.

The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported in April that

authorities in Chechnya had rounded up over 100 gay men or men

believed to be gay and tortured them. At least three of the men

had been killed, the newspaper reported.

Kremlin critics regarded the report as further evidence that

Moscow allows authorities in Chechnya to run the region - which

has been consumed by two wars since the 1991 disintegration of

the Soviet Union - as a feudal fiefdom in exchange for keeping

separatist and radical Islamist sentiment suppressed.

The second Chechen man, who gave his name as Ramzan, said he

had been detained by police in April and told to give the names,

addresses and work places of his gay contacts. He was beaten

when he declined to obey, he said.

He was saved from more serious torture by saying that one of

his uncles was a law enforcement officer, he said. But that put

his life in danger after police handed him over to relatives who

handcuffed him to a radiator in a village house.

"There was only one thing left to do: to get rid of me.

Because it was such a shame for a military family, for a rather

big family. We (in Chechnya) have only one way to resolve this."

He said he managed to escape with the help of his sister.

Nikita Safronov, a Moscow-based LGBT activist, said almost

100 people from Chechnya had already got in touch via an

LGBT-network hotline, and that more than 40 of them had been

"evacuated". Some had already left Russia, he added. 

Reuters

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