More homophobic violence in Chechnya, not even lesbians are safe. They end up dead, dumped in the woods
"I ran away from home, but my brothers tracked me down and brought me back," one of the girls, who did not wish to give her name, told Current Time. "When I came back, my mother just asked my brother why he brought me back. Why didn't he shoot me and leave the body in the woods instead. Fortunately, my father forbade him to do so."
The girl was also told by her parents that she was not a lesbian, but just possessed by an evil spirit. So she first headed to a psychiatric clinic, then underwent an exorcism at a local mosque. "We all knew that there really was no 'genie' in me. But I pretended anyway so that my parents would believe me," the girl says of her experiences before fleeing Chechnya.
The 2017 gay murder case opened Pandora's box. As The Russian LGBTI Network has found, the violence extends to lesbian and transgender women. The LGBTI Network has recorded at least 37 such cases of violence against lesbians, but in reality there may be many more.
"I was lucky to escape, but other girls didn't," says a survivor. "It is much harder for women to escape from Chechnya. Most of them can't leave home alone, without a family member accompanying them. That is why it is difficult to organise their evacuation," adds a representative of the LGBT Network.
Since 2018, according to Igor Kochetkov, the chairman of the aforementioned LGBTI organization, there have also been a growing number of cases where the police come for those Chechen women they only suspect of being gay. "Even the other girls who have run away are afraid to talk about this problem, they are afraid for their safety," says a refugee. "But nothing will change unless we start talking about what is happening."
"When someone kills a gay man, the whole world hears about it right away. When someone takes a woman into the woods, shoots her and leaves her body for the wolves, most of the time the neighbors don't care. Nobody asks what happened. Even the closest family does nothing," the girl concludes her story.
The situation of LGBTI people in Chechnya is really difficult. According to Gay Star News, the wave of violence against gays and lesbians increased again in 2018. However, President Kadyrov still claims that there are no homosexuals living in his country.
Two years ago, reports swept the world that violence was on the rise in Chechnya, particularly against young gay men. The police then just stood by and, in some cases, were supposed to be the perpetrators. According to some sources, such as the Russian server Novaya Gazetta, a concentration camp for gay men has even been set up in the town of Argun. It was practically a concentration camp where gays were subjected to interrogation and inhuman torture. However, despite the protests of the world public and many testimonies of survivors, Kadyrov refused to admit that such a thing was happening in his country.
