Russia’s Culture Of Anti-LGBT Bigotry Is Seeping Across Its Borders

var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};

The recent spike of anti-LGBT legislation and animus out of Russia has been as wrenching as it’s been publicized. Videos, reports, coverage – journalists and NGOs and Western governments have called out Putin’s bigoted populism. Criticizing Putin’s focus on majority tyranny has been, fortunately, a common thread of coverage during the Olympics.

Unfortunately, such coverage hasn’t yet dissuaded Moscow from its prejudiced policies. Moreover, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, such bigotry is seeping into other post-Soviet states.

Take, for example, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, both of which have Russia on their northern borders, and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, a pair of post-Soviet countries further south of Russia.

While suicides in Azerbaijan and movements against “lesbianism” in Kazakhstan have generated some articles, a pair of calls from the highest religious authorities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan could potentially be even more worrisome for LGBT rights in the region. (They also reek of even greater hypocrisy than we’ve seen out of Moscow, but more on that in a moment.)

Earlier this month, Tajikistan’s grand mufti, the government-sanctioned leader of the nation’s massive Muslim community, singled out the LGBT community for its especial role in crumbling nations. As the mufti noted:

“I am ashamed that this topic is to be discussed in the mosque. Unfortunately, I have heard about the homosexual orientation of educated and cultural people, who refused relationships with their wives and women and who commit the sin of sodomy,” independent Tajik agencies quoted [the grand mufti] as saying.

“I warn you against such sinful behavior. Each nation, who committed such sins, was punished severely.”

Between the Soviet Union’s disintegration and the horrific civil war that followed in Tajikistan – a small, impoverished ex-Soviet nation just north of Afghanistan – we’re left to wonder if the mufti somehow blames both of these social implosions on the LGBT community.

Not to be outdone, the grand mufti of Kyrgyzstan, Maksan Hajji Toktomushev, recently issued a fatwa against same-sex relations. Kyrgyzstan – a small, Central Asian nation that’s played a key and continuing role in the Afghan War – is a relatively conservative, Muslim-majority nation. And while it’s far more politically open than its neighbors, a recent Human Rights Watch report highlighted the fact that Kyrgyzstan’s social policies and stigmas remain on par with what we’ve seen stem from Russia.

The multimedia report ran through a series of interviews with forty Kyrgyzstani men, whose country legalized same-sex relations in 1998. The results are, unfortunately, unsurprising, and show the cultural legacy and impact of Kyrgyzstan’s neighbor to the north:

Kyrgyzstan police target gay and bisexual men in parks, gay clubs, hotel rooms, and on dating websites. Human Rights Watch documented cases of severe physical violence against gay and bisexual men including punching, kicking, and beating with gun butts, batons, empty beer bottles, or other objects. Several gay men also reported sexual violence by police officers including rape, group rape, and attempts to put a stick, a hammer, or an electric shock device in the person’s anus, as well as gratuitous touching during a search, or being forced to undress in front of police. …

“Police officers in Kyrgyzstan know that they can beat, rape, and otherwise torment gay men and extort money from them without suffering any consequences,” [Anna Kirey, LGBT rights research at HRW,] said. “Nobody should live in fear because of whom they love. Kyrgyzstan’s authorities need to put a stop to police abuse of gay men.”

Only two of the men interviewed, according to HRW, have filed complaints with the police. There have been no prosecutions or charges yet brought in any of the cases.

//www.youtube.com/embed/nnKFVh8SQ9E

There is, however, another aspect of the mufti’s timing that makes his comments that much more preposterous. Toktomushev was only the acting grand mufti – his predecessor, Grand Mufti Rakhmatullah-Hajji Egemberdiyev, was forced to resign in mid-January after a video surfaced showing him consorting with an unidentified young woman, according to The Moscow Times. While the video was, in and of itself, a sufficient scandal, matters compounded when it was revealed that the young woman was – surprise! – not Egemberdiyev’s wife. As if the affair weren’t enough, Egemberdiyev is also currently under investigation for tax evasion.

Unfortunately, the affairs of Egemberdiyev and the bigotry of Toktomushev aren’t the only traits sullying the mufiate’s office. The latter is currently the seventh grand mufti in the last four years, with each of his predecessors booted for further corruption or, in one case, being kidnapped and beaten to death. Not the most principled of positions.

Still, Toktomushev’s words are the most prominent we’ve recently seen pertaining to same-sex relations in Kyrgyzstan, which is widely considered the closest thing to a functioning democracy Central Asia knows. However, between this recent fatwa, and the continued practice of “bride-napping” - which is often less prosecuted than livestock theft – it’s clear Kyrgyzstan has a social climb ahead of it.

And it remains obvious that Moscow doesn’t stand as the outlier in the post-Soviet region when it comes to LGBT rights. Rather, much as it does politically, Russia stands as the trend-setter for the bigotry of the former Soviet sphere.

Image via YouTube

 

Casey Michel is a graduate student at Columbia University, and former Peace Corps Kazakhstan volunteer. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, and Talking Points Memo, and he has contributed multiple long-form investigations to Minneapolis’s City Pages and the Houston Press. You can follow him on Twitter.