The persecutors of Chechnya’s gay citizens now feel strong, untouchable, invincible. Their victims, who they arrest, beat and torture, are at their mercy. They are protected by many things: by the tinpot tyrants who rule a republic violently subjugated by Vladimir Putin; by the den of reactionary views that is the Moscow regime; and by the acquiescence – support even – of a society soaked in homophobic hatred.
Their consciences will not trouble them. It is always comforting to imagine that those who commit atrocities against fellow human beings are sociopaths or evil. But that does not explain the great horrors of human history, from fascism to colonialism. Inhumanity is only made possible by stripping a group of its humanity. You only feel empathy, after all, for those you feel are human beings like you. That’s how human beings who in other contexts feel compassion and love and warmth can become capable of the most unspeakable horrors.
But however strong Chechnya’s oppressors currently feel, history will damn them and unequivocally side with those they torment. That is of little comfort to those being beaten and tortured right now. The loneliness many of them feel will be total. Hated by the authorities, their families, their friends, all hope will feel vanquished.
The stories of beatings, mass arrests, concentration camps even, should horrify. But this is not the time for tutting and moving on to the next horrific news item. Let Chechnya be a watershed. Let this become the biggest outpouring of international solidarity with LGBT people in history. Let the persecution being meted out on the bodies of gay men now begging for their lives become a catalyst to build a global movement to unapologetically purge all hatred of LGBT people.
Yes, Chechnya is a profoundly conservative society whose bigotries are legitimised by reactionary Islamism. But however extreme its current manifestation in this Russian republic, homophobia everywhere springs from the same place. It is, above all else, about policing what it is to be a man. Being gay is regarded as the most sinful corruption of manliness. The Chechen persecutors may not flinch as they break bones, because they see them as a mortal threat to their own sense of masculinity. That’s why homophobia is so inextricably bound with the subjugation of women. In Chechnya – and all over the world – the struggle for LGBT rights will only be achieved with the liberation of women.
The Chechen regime has the audacity to claim that there are no gays in Chechnya. It reminds me of another tyrant, Robert Mugabe, who in 2015 proclaimed at the UN general assembly: “We are not gays!” Homosexuality was a western import, he claimed: a claim riddled with irony given homophobia in Africa and the Indian subcontinent is so bound up with the Victorian social conservatism imported by the colonists.
In any case, I can assure Chechnya’s regime that there are thousands of LGBT people languishing there. They want to love, like anybody else, without persecution, and however many are now tortured and arrested and disappeared and killed, in the end, they are going to win.
Pressure has to be exerted on the Russian regime. A global wave of protest, now, with many demands: from ending the persecution in Chechnya to our own country taking in refugees fleeing this horror. The tortured of Chechnya have to know that they are far from alone: that millions, queer and straight, are determined to end their misery, and will build a movement that will achieve just that.
But homophobic persecution is clearly not confined to Chechnya’s borders. Staunch western allies like Saudi Arabia torture, imprison and behead gay people. Being gay is a crime punishable by death in countries ranging from Nigeria to Qatar – the country set to welcome the globe’s great and good for the 2022 World Cup. The 2018 tournament, lest we forget, will be in Russia.
Egypt’s police entrap gay men using dating apps. In every country on Earth, being gay still means being treated, to some degree, as inferior: whether because of social penalties or because of legal persecution. Let the suffering of Chechnya’s gays boomerang on to their oppressors: let it become a spur to mobilise us against all forms of homophobia everywhere.
Imagine if that could be the net contribution of Chechnya’s bigots. Not to break gay men and silence them and eliminate them, but rather to galvanise a movement determined to rid every society of homophobic and transphobic hatred. Unlike homosexuality, homophobia is learned, and it can be unlearned too. However triumphant and powerful they feel, the torturers and killers are going to lose. It’s up to all of us to make sure of it.
