VICE Visits A Gay Torture Center in Chechnya
News on Chechnya has gotten pretty scarce in the past few weeks. Most of what we’re hearing is stuff about different countries taking in gay refuges.
If you don’t know to what I’m talking about, I’ll catch you up.
Earlier this year, reports starting coming out that in the country of Chechnya, which is ruled under Russia, there was a gay purge happening.
The government officially didn’t recognize any citizens as being gay, which then made it easier to secretly capture, torture, and in some cases even kill these men. And yes, they gay men were the focus on these incidents rather than any person of the LGBTQ community.
While Chechnya denied any of these incidents from happening, other governments asked for the country and Russia to cease these acts of cruelty. Russia did an investigation, but found nothing ot be worried about (at least on the surface).
More: Lithuania First Country To Give Visas To Men From Chechnya
Yet, gay men were fleeing from the country to Russia and some even gained asylum into other countries in Europe.
America however wanted nothing to do with the entire situation.
And now we find ourselves in a sort of radio silences concerning what’s going on in Chechnya.
That is, until VICE News decided to go to the country themselves.
The news group, which airs on HBO on Saturdays, went to one of the detention centers where gay men were held and tortured.
There they spoke to Ayub Kataev, a prison warden and the head of the ministry’s internal affairs, who denied all allegations towards what happened at the center.
That said, VICE News then went and spoke to a few men who had fleed from Chechnya and one confirmed that the location was in fact where he was held and tortuned to extremes such as being electrocuted.
If you are interested in checking out some of VICE News’s report, watch the video here.
h/t: VICE News
