Earlier this month, Belgium revealed that it gave five humanitarian visas to gay men fleeing the violent anti-gay Chechnya purge. This was surprising considering that any mention of the semi-autonomous Russian region had pretty much vanished from gay websites after nearly a year of non-stop reports of an ongoing campaign of kidnapping, torture and murder against the region’s LGBTQ citizens.
So we reached out to the Russia LGBT Network, a local organization that has helped approximately 119 gay and bi men escape the Chechnya purge, which has confirmed to us that the campaign has never stopped nor let up.
