Bisexual Chechen Woman Alleges Months of Torture

Chechen violence against the LGBT community has spurred protests in Geneva, Switzerland. (Wikipedia)

A 22-year-old bisexual woman from Russia’s Republic of Chechnya filed a lawsuit alleging she was illegally detained and tortured in psychiatric clinics for five months in 2018, according to the Russian LGBT Network.

Aminat Lorsanova asked Russia’s Investigative Committee to criminally charge her parents, her father’s acquaintance, and the staff of Grozny’s Clinic for Conterminal Psychiatric Conditions. The Network explains that Lorsanova alleges she spent 25 days at the Clinic and four months at the Republican Psycho-Neurological Dispensary against her will.

Lorsanova reports that her father’s friend would beat her while reading verses from the Quran in an attempt to perform an exorcism on her, according to the Moscow Times. She adds that her parents were present at these beatings, but did not intervene despite her pleas for help.

This would not be the last time Lorsanova would be subjected to domestic violence for her sexuality. The Moscow Times further reports that following her five-month imprisonment, her father would forcefully inject her with antipsychotic medication to convert her to heterosexuality. She told the Network, “He put handcuffs and tied my legs with adhesive tape, my mouth was also taped… After the injection of aminazin I was supposed to sleep that way. He even didn’t unleash my legs and hands.”

Despite being picked up by major news outlets such as Vice and the Moscow Times, the Russian internet has been largely silent on the issue. Top posts about the story on Russia’s largest social media site Vkontakte rarely received more than one thousand hits. The stories that were shared about the LGBT community were overwhelmingly positive, possibly reflecting Russia’s record-high support for LGBT rights as reported by the Moscow Times. However, the more likely reason is that Russians largely remain indifferent to the plight of LGBT people in the country.

Chechnya’s deputy interior minister told ABC in October 2019 that “He [a gay Chechen] is not afraid of me. He is afraid of his own family.” This entrenched culture of homophobia makes life for gay Chechens extremely dangerous.

This tragedy is yet another example of Chechnya’s extensive history of persecuting its sexual minorities. In April 2017, Russian opposition paper Novaya Gazeta broke news of anti-gay purges which resulted in countless extrajudicial kidnappings and incidents of torture, as well as the murders of at least three suspected gay men. The Caravel covered a second round of purges in which up to 20 people may have been killed in February 2019.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has denied the existence of gay people in Chechnya, a claim Russia has endorsed, according to the Moscow Times.

With the Network’s help, Lorsanova was lucky enough to engage Chechnya and flee Russia in April 2019. However, for many LGBT people still in Chechnya, threats and violence remain a daily reality.  Aside from fearing state-sanctioned purges, they are often subject to violence by their own family members, a fact acknowledged by Chechnya’s own leadership.