Kadyrov and Putin vs Gays and Democracy

By John Bacher

Two thugs, Ramzan Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin, have vicious histories of murdering their opponents. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, they have been subverting democratic governments, including by vilifying minorities, such as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender persons. In promoting this hatred, they have counterparts in populist movements in Brazil, the United States, and Western Europe.

Since being appointed president of Chechnya by Putin in 2008, Kadyrov has advised the Russian president while using his decrees to strengthen his own power. Before Putin’s ideas become policy in the Kremlin, Kadyrov champions them; these include Putin’s decision to become president for life, his invasion of Georgia and Ukraine, and his depiction of democracy as an American fraud. What a partnership! A week after Kadyrov imposed conscription into the Russian army in Chechnya, Putin applied it across Russia.

ISLAM AND GAY MEN

Chechnya is a conservative Muslim society with traditional male and female sex roles. The government’s horrific brutality against gay men did not emerge, however, until Putin moved in this direction throughout Russia in 2013 with a law against “Gay Propaganda” that deprived LGBT minorities of various support services.

Then in 2017 Kadyrov began in apply these policies fiercely in Chechnya. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta documented this change with reportage by a brave journalist, Elena Milashina. Novaya Gazeta had been founded with Mikhail Gorbachev’s donations from his Nobel Peace Prize Award. A Russian court ordered the paper to be closed after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In 2017 it had reported the seizure and torture of around a hundred gay men in Chechnya. Some were raped and three killed. Gays were typically forced to do tasks such as cleaning, which in Chechen society is usually reserved for women.

These persecutions were brought to the attention of Novaya Gazeta by a gay male Russian worker, Ayub Kataev, who had been abducted and placed in a secret jail in Argun, Chechnya. There he was tortured and witnessed the beatings and electric shockings of twenty other gay males, some of whom were released, but then murdered in honour killings. One 17-year-old male was thrown out of a nine-story building by outraged relations. Another technique of family brutality was marriage forced on women.

The Chechen police brutality occurred under the direct command of Kadyrov, and the LGBT minorities in Chechnya are persecuted by the Special Rapid Response Unit, (SOBR) a division of the Russian National Guard. In their sinister black uniforms, the SOBR entrap and blackmail gays throughout Russia by fake dating posts on apps such as Grindr.

Eyewitnesses reported that on August 10, 2017, SOBR agents were involved in the arrest of Chechen pop singer, Zelim Bakayev. Though based in Moscow, he was in Chechnya for his sister’s wedding. His cell phone went dead and he has not been seen since. It is assumed that he died of torture in SOBR’s custody. A fake video, produced in Germany claiming he is alive, was manufactured by Russian authorities.

In July 2017, Kadyrov stated that gay Chechen men should emigrate to Canada. This did happen to some extent through the lobbying efforts of an LGBTQ support group, the Rainbow Railroad. With the help of Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in December 2018, an airlift of 57 LGBT refugees. including several lesbian women, was carried out. One of these refugees, Amin Dzhabrailov, is now a prominent voice for exiled Chechens in Toronto, where he speaks in events to aid the Rainbow Railroad.

The National Guard and Kadyrov’s Chechen army fused together with horrific consequences early in the war in Ukraine. These units composed most of the Russian forces in Bucha when the massacres of civilians, rape and torture took place there. As with the Gestapo in Nazi Germany; Putin’s SOBR elite units and Kadyrov’s thugs steer a great nation toward genocide.

John Bacher is an environmentalist in St. Catharines, Ontario.