US Holocaust Museum condemns Chechnya’s reported persecution of gay men

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has said it is “deeply concerned” about recent reports that the Chechnyan government is persecuting gay men.

“The reports about the targeting of LGBT persons in Chechnya combined with statements from Chechen officials seemingly endorsing violence are cause for great concern,” Sara Bloomfield, director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, said Thursday in a statement. “Both the Chechen and Russian governments need to investigate these allegations and ensure the safety of LGBT populations within the Russian Federation.”

The Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported earlier this month that at least 100 gay men had been arrested and three were killed in Chechnya. Although the Chechnyan government denied the allegations, with one government spokesman telling The New York Times that gay men did not exist in the country, the report drew wide media attention.

Human Rights Watch confirmed the report, saying “a brutal campaign against LGBT people” had been taking place in the country for several weeks.

“The Holocaust teaches us what can happen when state-sponsored, group-targeted violence is allowed to go unchecked,” Bloomfield said in the statement, which noted that homosexuals were also persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-NY, also condemned the reported persecution.

“I am disgusted by the reports that Chechen authorities are unlawfully detaining, torturing, and possibly killing large numbers of gay men. There have also been reports of LGBT persons fleeing Chechnya in search of sanctuary from persecution,” the Jewish lawmaker said last week in a statement.

Reports of the abuse in Chechnya have drawn international condemnation, as activists have accused the authorities in Russia of turning a blind eye for fear of upsetting Ramzan Kadyrov, the country’s iron-fisted ruler for the last decade, in a region where Moscow fought two bloody separatist wars.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Monday that she was “disturbed” by the reports, while Sweden on Thursday said it had responded by summoning Russia’s ambassador.

Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch said that in her view: “It will only take a call from the Kremlin to Kadyrov for the arrests to stop.”

Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s office formally opened an investigation on Monday, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov downplayed the reports, saying there had been “no confirmation” of violence and arrests.

“These are some phantom complaints, absolutely depersonalized,” he said of media reports.

But Lokshina of Human Rights Watch countered that “imagining people coming forward with information without getting any effective protection, any security guarantee, is just impossible.”

“Here we are dealing with LGBT people and they are particularly vulnerable in Chechnya because in addition to fearing the authorities they also have to fear their own relatives,” she said.

The Novaya Gazeta reporter Irina Gordiyenko, one of the journalists who broke the story, has received a death threat from Chechnya’s chief mufti. The paper also received letters marked “Grozny 666666” containing white powder that proved harmless.

Gordiyenko says that Kadyrov rules with “absolute tyranny” with the Kremlin’s tacit consent.

“That’s what lies at the heart of the problem: the impunity of the Chechen authorities,” she said.