Russian Federation

Two years after the violent ‘gay purge’ in Chechnya, Russian authorities have failed to provide justice for the victims, Amnesty International said today.

In a crackdown revealed in 2017, dozens of men were abducted, tortured and killed for their real or perceived sexual orientation. To date, not one person has yet been held accountable for these crimes.

“The Russian authorities have shown themselves to be complicit in heinous crimes committed in Chechnya against people believed to be gay or lesbian”, said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

“Two years after reports of a ‘gay purge’ sent shockwaves worldwide, it’s clear that the perpetrators have gone unpunished because of state-sponsored homophobia and impunity for human rights violations in Chechnya.”

Meanwhile, authorities have also failed to provide effective protection to LGBTI rights defender Igor Kochetkov, the leading figure in the public investigation of the violent crackdown, who has recently received death threats.

Responding to news that a court in Rostov-on-Don, Southern Russia, has extended until 17 June the house arrest of Anastasia Shevchenko, prisoner of conscience and former coordinator with Otkrytaya Rossiya (Open Russia), a pro-democracy and human rights movement, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director, Marie Struthers, said:

“The criminal case against Anastasia Shevchenko is profoundly flawed, and by forging ahead with it regardless, the Russian authorities are creating an abhorrent precedent. Anastasia has lost her freedom and yet she has not committed any recognizable criminal offence. The authorities are casting their net ever more widely, with another former Otkrytaya Rossiya’s employee, Maksim Vernikov, now also facing criminal proceedings. We call on Russia to stop this increasingly ugly persecution.

“The Russian authorities must drop all charges against Anastasia Shevchenko and Maksim Vernikov, and repeal the ludicrous ‘undesirable organizations’ law which is blatantly being used to target human rights defenders.”

Background

The Russian authorities must stop their vicious campaign against opposition movement Otkrytaya Rossia (Open Russia), Amnesty International said today after an activist from the organization was charged for posting solidarity messages about a recently detained colleague.

Roman Zaitsev was indicted last night under Russia’s repressive “undesirable organizations” law for sharing Open Russia’s articles about activist Anastasia Shevchenko and an Amnesty statement calling for her release. In a further tragic twist this morning, Shevchenko’s 17-year-old daughter died in hospital. The authorities refused Shevchenko permission to visit her until hours before she passed away.

“The government’s crackdown on Open Russia is not only absurd and vicious; it has also reached a new level of cruelty. The persecution of Roman Zaitsev for supporting Anastasia Shevchenko, just at the time of her profound personal tragedy, says a lot about Russia’s heartless ‘justice’ system,” said Marie Struthers, Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International.

The Chechen authorities have unleashed a new wave of homophobic attacks since the end of December 2018. At least 40 people believed to be gay or lesbian have been arbitrarily detained and tortured in Chechnya, a republic in the south of Russia. 

Around 40 individuals have reportedly been detained in a government building in the city of Argun, where they have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. At least two individuals are reported to have died after being tortured, but the actual number of victims may be higher. The authorities are also said to be destroying the individuals’ passports. This makes it difficult for them to flee Chechnya in the future. The Russian authorities’ failure to investigate the 2017 attacks - which involved the abduction and killing of 100 gay men and women and for which no one has yet been held accountable - has enabled this homophobic crackdown to resume. 

Responding to the news that Crimean lawyer Emil Kurbedinov was detained by the de-facto authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea and is now facing charges for a Facebook post he made five years ago, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia said:

“Following yesterday’s arrest of prominent human rights defender Lev Ponomarev in Moscow, the detention of Emil Kurbedinov is the second time in two days that a human rights defender has been thrown behind bars over a Facebook post.

“The similarities of these two cases are obvious, even if they are not directly related. Both men are prominent members of the human rights community and both have been deliberately targeted by Russian authorities for this very reason.

“The authorities’ abuse of social media to target and harass activists is a cause of growing concern in Crimea. These politically-motivated charges must be dropped and he should be immediately and unconditionally released.”

Background

Responding to this morning’s arbitrary detention by Russian police of Aleksandr Golovach, a lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, on spurious charges of breaking a repressive law on public gatherings months ago, the Director of Amnesty International’s Russia office Natalia Zviagina said:

“The detention of Aleksandr Golovach is the latest example of the Russian authorities’ ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders and activists and illustrates how they will resort to any excuse to target those who dare to criticise them.

“This case reveals that Russia’s repressive law on public assemblies is not only being used as a tool of wiping protests from the streets; it can also be a reason to arbitrarily arrest and detain anyone at any time.

“The police have used the draconian law as a false pretext under which to detain Golovach.

“For as long as Aleksandr Golovach is deprived of his rights to liberty, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly solely in connection with his anti-corruption activism, he is a prisoner of conscience. He must be freed immediately and unconditionally.”

There’s a brave man in prison in Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city of one million people. His name is Emir-Usein Kuku. 

Early in 2016, a security officer (sort of like a police officer) told Emir-Usein’s son, “Your father did a bad thing and will rot in jail for 10 years.” 

Amnesty International disagrees that Emir-Usein did anything bad. Amnesty International believes he is a prisoner of conscience who should not spend even one more day in prison. (A prisoner of conscience is someone who is jailed only for their views.)

So what got Emir-Usein in trouble? 

One thing he did was to speak up for the rights of an Indigenous group called the Crimean Tatars. 

He also argued that people have a right to speak their minds and not be taken from their homes by the government, possibly never to return. 
Once when security officers asked him to work with them to spy on other people, he refused. 

Now the government is punishing him for not liking the way they rule the Russian Federation.