'Any day in Chechnya you can be taken.' Over the last year, ABC News has recorded the stories of LGBT men and women in and around Chechnya—where there is now virtually no space to be gay, and where dating carries potentially lethal consequences.
He was 19 and for most of his life he had lived a relatively sheltered life near Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, the autonomous republic in southern Russia. Ricky-- a pseudonym-- had known he was gay since his early teens but had almost never dated, his relationships were restricted to a tiny circle of friends who had discovered their sexuality together as they grew up. He was careful, he would normally only meet people 3 or 4 times a-year.
The international outcry to the alleged abuse of the LGBT community in Chechnya was huge -- protests were held in cities around the world and Western governments condemned the reports. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on top Chechen officials for their role in the persecution. Their accounts paint a picture of a place where there is now virtually no space to be gay, where dating carries potentially lethal consequences and the suppression of their identity is obligatory for LGBT people.Chechnya is a republic traumatized by violence. Located on Russia’s southwestern edge in the mountains of the North Caucasus, the area was devastated in two wars between the mid-1990s and later 2000s. Crushing a separatist rebellion, Russian troops gutted Grozny.
Recently, that conservative hostility to homosexuality seems at times though to have converted into organised terror, part of a broader conservative campaign that has also targeted drug and alcohol users. Chechen authorities have dismissed the allegations as invented. Kadyrov and other officials have famously said gay men don’t exist in Chechnya.
Ruslan, a bisexual man living in the neighboring republic of Dagestan, where attitudes are very similar to Chechnya, had a wife and a 1-year-old baby when he said his life was destroyed. That law, which effectively banned public displays of homosexuality, has been criticized by rights groups as green-lighting discrimination and violence against LGBT people.
In some ways life in Chechnya, where women are already face restrictions, is even harder for gay women. Lapunov's public allegations, amid intense international pressure, compelled Russia's Investigative Committee to open a probe into his case. But after less than a year, a court in Lapunov’s hometown of Stavropol ordered it closed, citing lack of evidence. Lapunov, receiving death threats, fled for his life, and now lives in Europe where he has asylum.
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