Gay teen thrown from ninth floor balcony in Chechnya as police tell families to ‘sort out’ their LGBT kids
By Joshua Haigh
A gay teenager has died after being pushed off a balcony in Chechnya by his uncle.
The 17-year-old teenager was thrown from his home’s ninth floor balcony after his uncle discovered that he was a gay man.
According to reports, these shocking incidents are becoming more frequent after police told families in the region that they must “sort out” their gay children, or face the consequences.
One of the victims of the country’s shocking homosexual purge, which has left gay men in fear for their lives, told the story of the shocking incident while discussing the response to his own coming out.
The anonymous man explained that after opening up about his sexuality, his teacher responded: “As a Chechen and as a man I do not want to see you here. Neither in the mosque, nor in this district.
“I want you to leave now, because everything you said is the most disgusting thing you can find out. I hope your relatives have the dignity to wash away your shame. Go away.”
Horrifying accounts of brutality and killings have been emerging from the largely self-governing Russian republic over the last month, after Novaya Gazeta reported that over 100 gay and bisexual men aged 16-50 had been detained by authorities over the last few months.
A newspaper now claimed over the weekend to have a list of more than 30 gay men who have been executed by the authorities or their own families during the terrifying campaign of violence.
One man who escaped Chechnya, and whose name, identity and location have been kept a secret for his own safety, told France 24: “We’ve always been persecuted but never like this. Now they arrest everyone.
“They kill people. They do what they want. They know that nobody will come after them because the order has come from above to ‘cleanse the nation’ of people like us.”
Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who was installed by Vladimir Putin in 2007, has repeatedly denied reports emerging from Chechnya, while a spokesperson for Putin said last month that survivors were choosing to remain anonymous because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.
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