As we in Australia fight for marriage equality, it is important to remember that LGBT people in other parts of the world are still fighting for the basic right to survive. One recent example of this can be seen in the story of Zelimkhan Bakaev, a Russian pop singer who has been missing since August, and whose family fear that he was caught up Chechnya‘s brutal anti-gay purge.
The 26-year-old singer was last seen in on August 8 in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny, where he had travelled for his sister’s wedding. His family reported him missing on August 17, and when rumours spread that he may have been killed or fled the country, a local human rights group made a statement saying they believed him to be alive and in detention.
Concerned for missing singer Zelimkhan Bakaev—who was detained by security forces after returning to Grozny #bringbakaevback #EyesOnChechnya pic.twitter.com/luNDXU0LSf
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) August 31, 2017
Last month, government-controlled media in Chechnya picked up on a pair of YouTube videos that purport to show a man resembling Bakaev in Germany. The veracity of the videos has been questioned, however, and a report on LGBT site New Now Next claims that they show Russian furniture in the background, as well as a brand of Russian soft drink not sold in Germany.
Bakaev’s Instagram account has mysteriously been deleted, but a small Twitter account in his name remains active, offering no recent updates. Earlier this week, Igor Kocketkov of the Russian LGBT Network made a statement to the media that touched on the disappearance, saying:
“At the end of August, we received confirmation of our earlier presumption that [Bakaev] was detained by Chechen authorities due to suspicion of homosexuality.”
At the same press conference, 30-year-old Maxim Lapunov detailed his own experiences with Chechnya’s anti-gay purge. He said that he was arrested by plain-clothes officers in March of this year, held in a cellar for 12 days and beaten, before signing a blank confession on release.
Lapunov told reporters at the press conference that he still hears the screams of other detainees in his nightmares. “The only charge they made was that I was gay,” he said of his release. “I could hardly walk. I was sure they were going to kill me, I was preparing for that.”
Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the conservative, Muslim-majority region, has previously claimed that “there are no gays in Chechnya.” In July of this year, he told media “if there are any gays… take them away from us. To purify our blood, if there are any, take them.”
In April of this year, there were claims that at least 100 men had been detained in anti-gay purges in the region, with reports of at least three deaths; numbers since then remain unclear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79azfAFLCHk
