Chechnya reportedly begins rounding up gays

W

Woodsman

The Living Force
"Chechnya police reportedly round up 100 suspected homosexuals"
-CBS News

"Authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya have launched an anti-gay campaign that has led to authorities rounding up dozens of men suspected of being homosexual, according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and human rights activists."
-The Guardian

"Chechen authorities rounding up and killing gay men in 'prophylactic purge,' Russian paper says"
-ABC News

"Chechen authorities have allegedly rounded up more than 100 men who are suspected to be gay and subjected to torture and murder, according to a Russian newspaper and human rights campaigners."
-The Independent

"Gay men go missing in Chechnya, reports say"
-CNN

Etc...

This story in the last 24 hours has been hammering the social media feeds -with the expected results and reactions. I've not seen a single bit of critical analysis. -Just lots of anger and outrage.

I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread about the subject in order to get a bead on what might actually be going on.
 
hlat said:
Sounds like more anti-Russian propaganda.
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I agree. The source of this story is a known anti-Russian outlet, and a Soros and USAID funded org.
 
This story has been making the rounds a bit the last few days. One article even called it "the first concentration camps since WW2". :rolleyes:


Have there been any reports of similar info from actual news sources within Russia? Being gay is legal in Russia, and one region can't unilaterally alter that legally, even if it was going on (which I'm skeptical of).
 
whitecoast said:
This story has been making the rounds a bit the last few days. One article even called it "the first concentration camps since WW2". :rolleyes:
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Yeah, it has and I read several times: ''From a credible Russian newsoutlet''....

How can those exist when freedom of press doesn't exist in Russia according to the western media.
 
First off, judging by past experiences, it is well justified to be at the minimun highly skeptical, or better, approach any such claims from the angle that pretty much everything in such reports is fabricated or at bes strongly distorted.

From that justified viewpoint, you can then approach the subject and see if anything in that "report" is even remotely applicable to reality. I just looked at the first story on CBS and low and behold it is based exclusively on a "secret source" within the police.

How that even justifies to create such an article is beyond me. If anything might be true to that story at all, then maybe 100 people have been arrested, but not "because they are homosexual", but because they probably pushed "homosexual Propaganda" (according to russian law) on people and likely children, which wouldn't make them homosexual per se, but some kind of perverts and/or pedophiles.

So if the latter is the case, what would be bad about it anyway? Absolutely nothing.
 
Novaya Gazeta is an opposition newspaper. I wouldn't trust the story unless otherwise verified. But also consider that Chechen society is very "traditional/conservative", so if the story is disinfo, it's designed to be plausible on the surface ("Chechens don't like gays, therefore..."). E.g., just read Kadyrov spokesman Alvi Karimov's response to the allegations:

“If there were such people [i.e. gays] in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs would not need to do anything with them because their relatives would have sent them to a place from which they could never return.”

In other words, there are no gay people in Chechnya (nonsense). And if there were, they wouldn't need special prisons because relatives would take care of the problem first.

That's assuming the quote is accurate, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt it at this point. Russian readers may be able to refute or verify.
 
To me it also appears to be timed for the distraction value in addition to the traditinal anti-Russian propaganda. The US missiles in Syria, the ' Oops mistake' airstrike killing 18 Kurds who were part of the coalition, the airstrike in Deir-Ezzor which reportedly hit a chemical depot with hundreds dead. So there are lots of reasons to distract people with illusonary topics that will kick in the emotions and at the same time toot the 'exceptional' freedoms in America, while distracting from the crimes of the empire.
 
whitecoast said:
This story has been making the rounds a bit the last few days. One article even called it "the first concentration camps since WW2". :rolleyes:

Have there been any reports of similar info from actual news sources within Russia? Being gay is legal in Russia, and one region can't unilaterally alter that legally, even if it was going on (which I'm skeptical of).
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Sputniknews.com refers to these 'reports' as 'alleged':

The Russian Interior Ministry will look into reports on the alleged persecution of LGBT men in the North Caucasus Chechen Republic, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Saturday, the Russian Novaya Gazeta reported, citing LGBT activists, as well as confirmations by sources in the Chechen Interior Ministry, the republican head administration, the local security service and the local prosecutor's office, that over 100 men suspected of having unconventional sexuality had been detained in Chechnya.

"The Kremlin knows about this but I think this is more of an issue for the security services to deal with, not the Kremlin… The publication exists and the Interior Ministry will, of course, be on this," Peskov told reporters.

The Presidential administration is unaware of whether the reports are accurate, he added.

"I am not an expert in the area of non-traditional sexual orientation and I cannot duly answer your question," Peskov said when responding on the meaning of Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov's press chief's comments that no LGBT community exists in the region.

Press chief Alvi Karimov had called the Novaya Gazeta publication "a lie" and said that it was impossible to persecute those "who do not exist in the republic."

Peskov added that anyone whose rights were violated by members of the security services should sue those responsible.
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https://sputniknews.com/russia/201704031052232081-russia-chechnya-lgbt/

Despite the reports still being unconfirmed, there already was a protest against it in front of the Russian Embassy in London yesterday:

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hundreds of people gathered outside the Russian embassy in London on Wednesday to protest after reports from human rights groups that up to 100 gay men are being held and tortured in "camps" in Russia's southern region of Chechnya.

(...)

Protesters in London chanted "close the camps" and "queer rights are human rights" before laying pink flowers outside the embassy.

(...)
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_http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-lgbt-protest-idUSKBN17E2N0

I didn't quote the entire article because it's written with a strong anti-Russian bias and it heavily quoted the Novaya Gazeta. Which as Approaching Infinity said is not a very reliable source.

Here's a YouTube video from the protest too: _https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkrnzj-Jp54

So yeah, organising a protest when the information isn't even properly verified does smell of propaganda.
 
God,people react so mechanically without even reading anything.I've already seen people get angry about ''russian concentration camps for gays''.All these lies are infuriating.
 
Probably the most interesting in this story are not the articles publlished by Novaya Gazeta, but the reaction of Chechen officials to them. Instead of calmly refuting the allegations they became very emotional. Let's have a look what exactly they are saying:

On Friday, April 14, Chechen human rights activist Saratova told RBC about a meeting in the central mosque of Grozny, which, according to her, had many of her relatives and acquaintances. "This meeting was a reaction to the publication in Novaya Gazeta that there are gay people in Chechnya and they are being harassed." Slander mainly consists of the fact that there are people of unconventional sexual orientation in Chechnya.The people that Novaya Gazeta wrote about, , They are not gays, they are people detained in December of last year in suspicion of complicity with terrorists. "Whether they are guilty or not, the investigation will figure it out," she explained.

…

Commenting on the fact that the resolution was perceived by the journalists of Novaya Gazeta as a threat to their own lives, the Chechen mufti explained: "I do not want to call them people, these people can perceive this resolution as they please. I know one thing: these people will answer, and they will answer for good!"


Source: _http://www.newsru.com/russia/14apr2017/chechnya.html
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So these people don't just got very upset with the articles, they clearly demonstrated their denial of mere fact of existence of gays amongst them. Their words sound very like words of ISIS to me (the chief editor of Novaya Gazeta noticed it as well). There is a Russian proverb: there is no smoke without a fire. Such strong reaction points that they should have something to hide.

Some might say that Russia is a lawful state and if someone threaten the life of another he/she will be prosecuted. Well, that's mostly true but there are exceptions. Practically Kadyrov's men are untouchable in Russia. Not police, not even FSB can freely investigate crimes involving Chechens with ties to Kadyrov. That's the price of loyalty Putin pays to Kadyrov to keep the "Caucasus gates" closed. (That's my subjective opinion based on personal observations.) The journalists' fears have their grounds: their colleague Anna Politkovskaya was killed in 2006. She worked for the same Novaya Gazeta and mainly investigated crimes of Chechen mafia.

I ask you not make fast judgements in this story merely on the fact that Novaya Gazeta has/had financial ties to Open Society Foundations. Technically there are no other newspapers in Russia making journalist investigations. The scandal created by Western media is another story.
 
Approaching Infinity said:
Novaya Gazeta is an opposition newspaper. I wouldn't trust the story unless otherwise verified. But also consider that Chechen society is very "traditional/conservative", so if the story is disinfo, it's designed to be plausible on the surface ("Chechens don't like gays, therefore..."). E.g., just read Kadyrov spokesman Alvi Karimov's response to the allegations:

“If there were such people [i.e. gays] in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs would not need to do anything with them because their relatives would have sent them to a place from which they could never return.”

In other words, there are no gay people in Chechnya (nonsense). And if there were, they wouldn't need special prisons because relatives would take care of the problem first.

That's assuming the quote is accurate, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt it at this point. Russian readers may be able to refute or verify.
Click to expand...

Apparently he later said it was an "April fools joke".
 
Joe said:
Approaching Infinity said:
Novaya Gazeta is an opposition newspaper. I wouldn't trust the story unless otherwise verified. But also consider that Chechen society is very "traditional/conservative", so if the story is disinfo, it's designed to be plausible on the surface ("Chechens don't like gays, therefore..."). E.g., just read Kadyrov spokesman Alvi Karimov's response to the allegations:

“If there were such people [i.e. gays] in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs would not need to do anything with them because their relatives would have sent them to a place from which they could never return.”

In other words, there are no gay people in Chechnya (nonsense). And if there were, they wouldn't need special prisons because relatives would take care of the problem first.

That's assuming the quote is accurate, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt it at this point. Russian readers may be able to refute or verify.
Click to expand...

Apparently he later said it was an "April fools joke".
Click to expand...

I read that he referred to the "gay prison" report as an April fools' joke. Did he also say that about his own statement?

https://www.rt.com/news/383152-chechnya-gay-detentions-report/

The head of Chechen interior ministry's press service, Magomed Deniev, told RBC media company that he had had no information on any such detentions and suggested the report might have been "an April Fools' joke."

Commenting on the report to RIA Novosti news agency, Karimov said that "men in Chechnya lead a healthy lifestyle, practice sports and have only one [sexual] orientation, defined since humankind creation.

"There are no other orientations in Chechnya," he told RIA, adding that his statement is supported by "high birth rate" in the region.
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