Genocide charges filed against Chechnya
According to a report in Gay Star News, three French LGBT organizations have filed a complaint against Chechnya with the International Criminal Court.
The groups are accusing Chechnya of holding “a policy of genocide” towards LGBT people and blame president Ramzan Kadyrov and other state officials for a ‘wave of persecution’.
Etienne Deshoulières, representing Stop Homophobia, Mousse, and Comite Idaho France, called Kadyrov ‘the architect’ of ‘a genocide’.
He also called him “the organizer of torture camps with a desire to exterminate homosexuals”.
The groups are urging the court to quickly investigate claims of torture, beatings and killings in Chechnuya.
Teen Thrown from Building in Chechnya
They cite the recent case involving a 17-year-old boy who was outed to his family and then viciously thrown off a 9th floor balcony by his uncle, who wanted to ‘wash the shame’ off the family.
As reported in Gay Star News:
“Alexandre Marcel, who chairs Comité Idaho France, said filing a complaint with the ICC was ‘the only way to pursue Nazi behavior’.
On 1 April, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a report called Honor Killings, in which they revealed Chechnya was systematically persecuting gay men.
According to the newspaper, the country is operating a concentration camp for gay and bi men.
An estimated 100 men were imprisoned in the camps, and at least three of them were killed.
One of them, Novaya Gazeta said, died of torture and the other two were killed by relatives.
Survivors spoke of violence and torture, in at least one cast by a ‘homemade electric chair’, so they would give up the names of other gay men.
As of 25 April, it is believed Chechnya is operating six concentration camps, with at least 200 men illegally detained there.
Kadyrov also said he wants to eliminate the gay community ‘by the beginning of Ramada’, which this year falls on 26 May.
Kadyrov’s spokesperson Alvi Karimov has claimed gay people ‘simply do not exist’ in the republic.
He said: ‘If there were such people in Chechnya, their relatives would send them somewhere from whence they could not return.”
Recently, GPB reported on a man who had been held in a Chechen detention camp. He shared that he (and others) were electrocuted and forced to beat one another up with led pipes.
h/t: Gay Star News
