There are grave fears for the life of missing Russian pop singer Zelim Bakaev, after an anonymous source came forward to tell LGBT news site New Now Next that he was murdered by authorities in Chechnya as part of the region’s anti-gay purge.
As previously reported, Bakaev was last seen on August 8 of this year, failing to return home to Moscow after attending attending his sister’s wedding in Grozny; his family, unable to contact him, reported him missing the next week.
Human rights groups previously believed that the 26-year-old singer had been detained by authorities in Chechnya due to his sexuality, but the new source claims otherwise, saying:
“He arrived in Grozny and was picked up by police within three hours. Within ten hours he was murdered.”
This past year has seen a violent crackdown on gay men in the conservative, Muslim-majority state, with survivors saying that they were imprisoned, beaten and interrogated under torture to give up the names of other gay men.
Before being kidnapped, Zelim Bakaev had regular panic attacks on trips visiting family in Russia’s Chechnyahttps://t.co/orqf0HMxwz pic.twitter.com/5RIA4geFMR
— вареничок.еріставі 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 (@maksymeristavi) August 19, 2017
An especially horrifying France 24 report revealed that the families of gay men have been instructed in some cases to kill them, in a process referred to as “cleaning your honour with blood.” An anonymous witness claimed to have observed one such killing take place in a forest.
In an interview with Vice earlier this year, Chechen leader Ramazn Kadyrov denied the existence of gay people in the region, saying:
“We don’t have those kind of people here. We don’t have any gays. If there are any take them to Canada. Praise be to God. Take them far from us so we don’t have them at home. To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.”
Bakaev had previously been a popular singer in Chechnya, and a screenshot from his now-deleted Instagram hows him meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov at an unspecified time.
As yet, there is no official confirmation about the fate or whereabouts of Bakaev.
