Chechnya’s Anti-Gay Pogrom

If Donald Trump signs the promised anti-LGBT "religious freedom" executive order today, America will have taken the first step to legalize the open abuse of LGBT Americans.  The move will electrify the 81% of evangelical Christians who voted for Trump, a twice divorced, serial adulterer and sexual predator as part of their quest to inflict a form of Christian sharia law on America.  From Trump's perspective, the move will be akin to Vladimir Putin's anti-homosexuality laws aimed at strengthening support from the similarly anti-gay Russian Orthodox Church which has long placed advancing its own political power ahead of democratic principles and/or the civil rights of others. The New York Times looks at the anti-gay pogrom underway in the Russian republic of Chechnya which is an outgrowth of legalized homophobia and religious extremism being championed by one of Putin's henchmen.  The ultimate motivation is political both for Putin and his lapdog, Ramzan Kadyrov.  Here are highlights:

At the beginning of April, reports surfaced that a crackdown on gay men was afoot in Chechnya, the small, turbulent republic on the southern edge of the Russian Federation. According to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, more than 100 gay men were rounded up by the police and brutalized in secret prisons, and at least three of them were killed. Many remain in detention.

In fear and desperation, 75 people called in to the Russian LGBT Network’s Chechnya hotline. Of these, 52 said they had been victims of the recent violence, and 30 fled to Moscow where they received help from L.G.B.T. activists.

“Once they bring you there,” a survivor told me, referring to the secret prison in Chechnya where he’d been detained, “they immediately start the beatings and electrocutions, demanding information about who you were dating.”

This persecution of gays is symptomatic of the repressive regime that now runs Chechnya. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago, that rugged outpost of the old empire has lived through separatist agitation, terrorism and two bloody wars. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, some 5,000 are still missing, and its towns were left in ruins.

Chechnya’s autocratic leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has enjoyed near unconditional support from Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad, started out as a separatist Islamic leader, but at the beginning of Russia’s second military campaign against Chechen rebels, which began in 1999, he swapped sides to support Moscow.

Mr. Kadyrov ensured that his fighters were integrated into the local police force, largely preserving the command chains, and their violent skills were deployed in heavy-handed counterterrorism operations on behalf of the Kremlin.

Loyalty to Moscow was rewarded with lavish federal funds to raise Chechen towns from rubble and build shiny skyscrapers in the capital, Grozny.

Collective punishment is the hallmark of Mr. Kadyrov’s repression. Relatives of those who displease the authorities are threatened, beaten, held hostage, expelled from the republic or have their homes burned down. Such methods were first applied to suspected rebels but have spread to regime critics, religious dissenters, even drunken drivers. The same techniques have now been applied to the families of men thought to be gay, which are threatened with detention unless the suspects turn themselves in to the police.

In this climate of humiliation and immense fear, Chechens are fleeing the Russian Federation en masse. Yet the Kremlin turns a blind eye to such excesses in return for allegiance. Mr. Kadyrov calls himself a foot soldier for Mr. Putin.

The regime’s coercive methods are allied with punitive conservative values. Official Chechen ideology is a mix of traditionalism, Sufi Islam and Putinism. The authorities have banned alcohol, enforced dress codes and “moral behavior” for women, supported honor killings and blood feuds, and even closed orphanages as being alien to Chechen culture.

As news reports emerged about the arrests of gay men in the republic, Mr. Kadyrov met with Mr. Putin on April 19. Mr. Kadyrov is said to have complained to the Russian president about the “provocative articles” in the news media on issues he felt “embarrassed” to talk about. This show of coyness and piety no doubt played well with his supporters. Since the news broke, the Chechen leadership has fomented homophobia. . . . . in fact, it is part of their new ideology of a ‘pure nation.’ ”

By promoting nationalism and traditionalism, Mr. Kadyrov tries to prove to Chechens that their republic now has more autonomy than separatist leaders ever dreamed of; and this justifies his strong pro-Putin position. But his appeal to tradition is self-serving and spurious. Until now, Chechnya never had any record of organized violence against gays.

Mr. Kadyrov and his clique depend entirely on Mr. Putin. It is within the Russian president’s power to halt the violence against gay men, empty the illegal prisons and force an investigation into this crackdown. If Mr. Putin continues to give the Kremlin’s tacit approval to Mr. Kadyrov’s repressions, he is only storing up trouble for the Russian Federation.

The Chechen conflict has not been resolved but merely contained by brute force and a personal bond between the two leaders. In the long run, such an unstable situation makes a deadly new conflict in Chechnya almost inevitable.

Putin will not stop the mayhem since he needs the Russian Orthodox Church to help legitimize his dictatorship in Russia.   That Trump seemingly supports despots like Putin and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines ought to gravely concern decent and moral Americans.  As shown by their support of Trump, this latter categorization does not include evangelical Christians as a whole.