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Victim of Chechnya 'gay purge' calls on Moscow to investigate

Maksim Lapunov told journalists on he had been detained in the capital Grozny in March on suspicion he was gay - Anna Artemeva
Maksim Lapunov told journalists on he had been detained in the capital Grozny in March on suspicion he was gay - Anna Artemeva

A gay man who was tortured until he thought he would die in the bloody basement of a police station in Chechnya has become the first victim to speak publicly and demand an investigation of the homosexual purge in the Russian region.

Maksim Lapunov, a 30-year-old entertainer who had worked in Russia's predominantly Muslim Chechnya for two years, told journalists on he had been detained in the capital Grozny in March on suspicion he was gay. 

Police kept him in a basement for 12 days, where he slept on cardboard in a cell “doused in blood,” and interrogated him for the names of other gay men, he said. 

When he refused to talk, they stood him face against a wall and beat his legs, back and ribs with a club until he could no longer stand. After a break, they picked him up and started again.

“From their actions, I assumed that they would kill me after some period of time,” Mr Lapunov said. 

Maksim Lapunov, 30, gives a press conference in Moscow - Credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP
Maksim Lapunov, 30, gives a press conference in Moscow Credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP

Mr Lapunov is not ethnically Chechen, and he was released, barely able to walk, after his family in another region began searching for him.

 “They had been ready to come pick up my corpse,” he recalled, holding back tears. But about 30 other men were held in the basement with him, he said, many of whose fates remain unknown.

Some of them were tortured with electric shocks, he said.

Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta first reported in April that law enforcement was rounding up and torturing dozens of gay men in Chechnya, then later handing them over to relatives with the suggestion that only an “honour killing” could clear the family reputation. 

A gay man who fled Chechnya sits on his bed in Moscow in April. - Credit: Naira Davlashyan/AFP/Getty Images
A gay man who fled Chechnya sits on his bed in Moscow in April. Credit: Naira Davlashyan/AFP/Getty Images

At least five of those detained wound up dead.

Dozens of other Chechens disappeared this spring after being detained on flimsy suspicions of they planned to join terrorist groups, the Sunday Telegraph has reported.

Chechnya head Ramzan Kadyrov has denied the reports and claimed that there are no gays in the region, and if there were, “their own relatives would send them to a place from where they wouldn't return”. 

Maksim Lapunov along with human rights and gay rights activists during the Moscow press conference - Credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP
Maksim Lapunov along with human rights and gay rights activists during the Moscow press conference Credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and foreign officials including Boris Johnson have called on Moscow to take measures against the anti-gay campaign in Chechnya, but Russian investigators have not brought anyone to account.

Mr Lapunov filed a complaint with Russia's human rights ombudswoman in August, which she passed on to the federal investigative committee the following month, it was revealed on Monday. 

Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia's Chechnya region, meets with president Vladimir Putin in April. - Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/TASS via Getty Images
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia's Chechnya region, meets with president Vladimir Putin in April. Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/TASS via Getty Images

But investigators have failed to provide Mr Lapunov with state protection or respond to his request to take them to the police station where he was held, said Vladimir Smirnov, a lawyer from the Committee Against Torture who is representing him.

Even though he has already been threatened by Chechen police to keep quiet, Mr Lapunov said he decided to go public with his story in the hope that this will spur investigators to finally take action.

“People shouldn't be able to act so repulsively and do what they want for no reason and with impunity,” he said. “We are all people, we have rights, and (in Chechnya) they are absolutely not observed.”