The UK to protest Chechnya’s gay concentration camps

LONDON is slated to hold a protest today against the reported gay concentration camps in Chechnya.

To be held outside the Russian embassy, the protest is being organised amid reports of more than 100 gay men detained in prisons, and at least three killed.

“More government action across the EU needs to be taken immediately to stop these atrocities,” said Steve Taylor, communications director of European Pride Organisers Association.

“We are seeing very little response to this in the mainstream media, and government action so far is poor.

“We must not be bystanders and we must challenge this inhumanity.”

Britain’s leading queer charity for Muslims, Imaan LGBTQ, has condemned the reported camps in the primarily Muslim republic.

“We condemn the reported actions of the Chechen authorities against its LGBT population and call on fellow Muslims everywhere to do the same,” they said on Twitter.

A Chechnyan government spokesperson has denied the allegations of concentration camps, saying there are no gay people in Chechnya.

“You can’t detain and harass someone who doesn’t exist in the republic,” they said.

Russian group LGBT Network has said it will evacuate people from the region.

“No national and/or religious traditions and norms can justify kidnapping or killing of a human being,” they said.

“The Russian LGBT Network is ready to evacuate people.”

Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Australia’s leading civil rights organisation against hatred, said,  “We decry in the strongest possible terms the reports that the LGBTI community is being targeted and singled out in such a reprehensible and chilling manner.

“It will take more than words to fight this explosion of hatred. We urge the Australian government, and the international community, not to be bystanders and to immediately take measures to stop this campaign of persecution, violence and murder, and to impose sanctions if this horrific practice does not cease.

“Who would have thought that more than 70 years after the brutal and systematic extermination of millions in the Nazi concentration camps, that we would hear of people being rounded up and placed in camps simply because of who they are? ‘Never again’ means that that governments and civil society must raise their collective voice and act against this heartbreaking injustice. We hope that the perpetrators of these crimes are dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.”

Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop is yet to comment on the reports.