Anti-Gay Purge in Chechnya
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With all the progress that gay rights have had in many countries, it's horrifying and sickening to see how bad it can get for members of the LGBT community in other parts of the world. :cry2:
Religion used as an excuse to hunt people down like animals, and to turn family and friends against each other. If you are in any position at all to help, please do. Whether to spread awareness or donate to causes or talk to your own government. This kind of hatred can't go unchallenged.
We need to fight for those who have no power to fight for themselves.http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/4/14/invitation-execution-gay-men-anti-gay-purge-chechnya
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I live in Brazil and am amazed by the ignorance of society towards homosexuals. Although we are evolving. It is sad to be condemned to death for liking men.
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This is plain and simple murder on a massive scale. I'd like to think that every decent human being would be sickened by this atrocity.
If not for the good fortune of being born in a place with more tolerant societies, this could happen to any of us. I know this is a g place where we just come to download some porn and get our rocks off, but every little bit helps- so if you want to make a difference they have some suggestions: -
Always help in any way you can, but it's important to note: these people are fanatics – maniacs -- and the only things that are likely to make any difference past a point is the kind of resistance that shows them they can't just massacre people with impunity. Active resistance is going to most likely be the only thing that pushes this back on any course from barbarism. Stonewall's riot was the thing that turned the tide even in a country as obsessed with freedom as the US. It's going to take some serious shit in a cesspool like Chechnya.
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This is quite disturbing. It is incredible - and scary - how quickly a society that is miserable will turn on a group of people. When things start falling apart and people are miserable, it seems the gays are a quick target.
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Although I suspect this won't be very popular, I want to suggest another possibility.
Chechnya - even more than the rest of Russia - is a conservative society where same-sex activity is tacitly tolerated but seldom talked about. The influx of liberal Western sexual ideologies and discourses has upset this fragile equilibrium, threatening to make homosexuality far more visible and openly accepted. This police clampdown on gay men in Chechnya was prompted by an application for a series of gay pride parades in the Muslim-majority Caucasus region. This kind of visibly-'gay' ideology is obviously foreign to Chechnya, and it has provoked a violent and repressive reaction. But the reaction is not simply a clampdown on men who have sex with men (which is hardly a new phenomenon, even in Chechnya). It is also, more importantly, an attempt to resist the incursion of Western sexual norms and ways of talking about sexuality.
And Chechnya is not the only place where this has happened. In Africa and the Middle East too, violent and repressive responses have emerged not simply to gay people, but to the attempt to 'import' Western notions of homosexuality and gay rights. Which makes me deeply suspicious of the complacent Twitter-warriors who think that more visible queerness is the way to help men who have sex with men in non-Western and non-liberal cultures. The fact is that banging the drum of gay rights and attacking indigenous attitudes to sexuality may simply be making their situation much worse.
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Although I suspect this won't be very popular, I want to suggest another possibility.
It is also, more importantly, an attempt to resist the incursion of Western sexual norms and ways of talking about sexuality.And Chechnya is not the only place where this has happened. In Africa and the Middle East too, violent and repressive responses have emerged not simply to gay people, but to the attempt to 'import' Western notions of homosexuality and gay rights. Which makes me deeply suspicious of the complacent Twitter-warriors who think that more visible queerness is the way to help men who have sex with men in non-Western and non-liberal cultures. The fact is that banging the drum of gay rights and attacking indigenous attitudes to sexuality may simply be making their situation much worse.
I can see what you're getting at- but I think the whole line of thinking misses a very important key point- the West doesn't have a monopoly on gays or gay rights. Many countries in other parts of the world are also fighting for gay visibility and acceptance.
AND- another very important point is that–just because these are the norms of Chechnya doesn't mean they have to stay that way. That's like saying slavery was accepted and dominant in the US once upon a time- and the slaves shouldn't be "banging on the drum of slave rights" or attacking the attitudes of the time. If the slaves remain silent, then they inadvertently help to preserve a status quo that keeps the oppressed under the iron fist of the oppressors.
Societies evolve and progress because people fight for their rights- for equality- for the chance to live in peace.If we all just hide behind the don't-rock-the-boat mentality, then we'd still all be closeted gays, cowering in fear because society refuses to change and no one is fighting to change it.
And setting all of those things aside--the concentration camps, being held without trial, torture and such= these are things no decent human being should sit aside and just let happen without a word of protest or a whisper of condemnation.
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It may be true that the West no longer has a monopoly on gay rights (though the whole idea of 'gay rights' and even 'homosexuality' is - in my view - unquestionably a Western one). But nor does the West have a monopoly on decency and dignity - or even on 'progress'. There may well be ways for sexual minorities to exist quite happily in non-Western cultures without embracing Western sexual identities or politics, including rhetoric about 'rights' and 'equality'.
The problem is that we live in a world where Western cultural and moral assumptions are still spreading globally, even at the moment when Western economic and military power is beginning to be eclipsed. Media and popular culture carry Western assumptions about sex and sexual identity, but Western nations no longer have the power to defend their worldview against reactions. This is doubly unfortunate for sexual minorities in many countries (like Uganda or Russia or Iran) which have existed happily for many centuries, but are now confronted on the one hand with labels and political rhetoric imposed on them from the outside, and on the other hand with a reaction from politicians who perceive them as an insidious foreign influence.
None of this, of course, is in any way to condone what is going on in Chechnya. But it may be that noisy condemnation from Western nations and from gay rights lobby-groups is doing more harm than good. Which raises a question: what do we want to achieve here? Do we want to end this police harassment and improve conditions for men who have sex with men in Chechnya? Or do we want to try to impose our own ideas about sexual morality and identity on another culture?
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When your eastern moral depends on torturing someone or killing them, it's not that good of a moral and maybe you need a western import… Just saying we don't have the monopoly of decency, but neither do them... maybe learning acceptance and minding your own busyness and less religious fanatism could help... this idea that you should not impose on people who are killing themselves because it's their religious freedom... it's kind of disgusting.
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This policy is condemnable. By the way, recent news highlights how action can be taken: http://slippedisc.com/2017/04/a-gay-russian-violinist-comes-out-on-social-media/
An interview may be read here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/this-is-what-happened-when-a-young-russian-came-out-as-gay?utm_term=.qkwX4m6jw#.ocG0NlpxR
And the video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh7L-V0yHvM.
My solidarity with the people of Chechnya -
It may be true that the West no longer has a monopoly on gay rights (though the whole idea of 'gay rights' and even 'homosexuality' is - in my view - unquestionably a Western one).
None of this, of course, is in any way to condone what is going on in Chechnya. But it may be that noisy condemnation from Western nations and from gay rights lobby-groups is doing more harm than good. Which raises a question: what do we want to achieve here? Do we want to end this police harassment and improve conditions for men who have sex with men in Chechnya? Or do we want to try to impose our own ideas about sexual morality and identity on another culture?As an Asian man who studied a bit of historical instances of gay life in Asian cultures, like Japan for instance- I dispute your point that the whole idea of 'homosexuality' is unquestionably a Western one. So, again, pushing the notion that this is about the spread of a purely Western idea is mistaken.
Here's an excerpt of just the kind of thinking by anti-gay groups in Chechnya right now:
Alvi Karimov, spokesman for (Moscow-backed leader) Kadyrov, has denounced the reports of anti-gay operations in Chechnya as “absolute lies and disinformation”, insisting that there are no gay people in Chechnya to round up. “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic,” he told Interfax news agency.
He added: “If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
This is the kind of chilling hatred that gays in Chechnya are facing. What do we want to achieve? We want the killing, torture and rounding up to stop. What we want is basic human rights and decency and the ability to live without being murdered on the street. It is less about "trying to impose our own ideas about sexual morality and identity on another culture", and more about fighting for basic human dignity and rights. And I think that isn't a monopoly of the West- it's something all human beings deserve and need to fight for.
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There was a show of support from an unexpected source: Republican Sen Marco Rubio denounced Vladimir Putin for enabling the purges.
Every bit of attention and condemnation of the atrocities helps. Specially coming from someone who hasn't been supportive of the gay community in the past is encouraging.http://www.advocate.com/politics/2017/4/25/sen-marco-rubio-condemns-antigay-violence-chechnya
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Please consider donating to https://www.lgbtnet.org/
The money donated helps get LGBT people out of Chechnya and into safe houses, until they are given asylum by Western countries. The LGBT Network also provides them with much-needed psychological and physical care.
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sad
