Tue 4 Apr 2017 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Police in the Russian republic of Chechnya have allegedly rounded up over 100 men suspected to be homosexual, killing three of them. Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta says it uncovered the information which was then confirmed with sources in both the government and police however a spokesperson for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied the claim saying there is no homosexuals in the republic. “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic,” he says. “If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.” Adding the report is “absolute lies and disinformation”. The Guardian reports that the author of the Novaya Gazeta article is regarding as “a leading authority on Chechnya. Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group, revealed to the Guardian that over the past 10 days she had received worrying information from various sources however this was coming in second or third hand. She says this is because of the taboo nature of the subject. “I have heard about it happening in Grozny [the Chechen capital], outside Grozny, and among people of very different ages and professions,” she says. “It’s next to impossible to get information from the victims or their families, but the number of signals I’m receiving from different people makes it hard not to believe detentions and violence are indeed happening.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 4th April 2017 - 12:08am