NYT

Chechen Authorities Arresting and Killing Gay Men, Russian Opposition Paper Says

Chechnyan official denies, saying no gay men exist in Chechnya

 A spokesman for Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the report in a statement to Interfax on Saturday, calling the article “absolute lies and disinformation.”  

“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency.  

“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Mr. Karimov said. 

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 In the restive Muslim regions, Mr. Putin has empowered local leaders to press agendas of traditional Muslim values, to co-opt an Islamist underground. The gay pride parade applications became a galvanizing issue.

"In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders," Novaya Gazeta reported.

According to the report, the authorities set to finding and arresting closeted gay men, partly by posing as men looking for dates on social networking sites.

“Of course, none of these people in any way demonstrated their sexual orientation publicly — in the Caucasus, this is equal to a death sentence,” the newspaper wrote of those detained in the sweep. 

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