They Starve You. They Shock You: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya

[grossproffit]

<snipped>

Homosexuality is taboo in Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas of the Caucasus region in southern Russia. “This society is highly homophobic,” said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group and an authority on Chechnya. “Homosexuality is condemned. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin.”

Nevertheless, before the crackdown, gay men in Chechnya could at least lead social lives, if heavily closeted ones, Maksim said. They met largely in private chat rooms on social networking sites with names like the Village or What the Mountains Are Silent About.

“When two gay men meet, they don’t tell one another their true names,” Maksim said. Men met at cafes or at apartments rented for a night, he said. “Nobody suspected my sexual orientation, not even my best friends.”

The crackdown began after GayRussia, a rights group based in Moscow, applied for permits for gay pride parades in the Caucasus region, prompting counterprotests by religious groups, the men said. In Chechnya, it became something even worse — a mass “prophylactic” cleansing of homosexuals, the security service agents told the gay men as they rounded them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/chechnya-russia-attacks-gays.html

[William769]

1. Its a sad day for humanity on many fronts.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. This is how it starts.

They begin with a maligned group, and one which is not well liked in general, and test the bounds. Gay men are "canaries in the coalmine" at this point. People will wag their fingers and 'tsk-tsk', but little, if anything, will be done about it. These atrocities will be used as a cautionary tale by anti-gay forces here, and their apologists. "See, you could have it worse!"