Chechen Pop Star Was Tortured and Executed
A human rights group claims that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov directly ordered the murder of Zelimkhan Bakaev.
A human rights organization claims that a popular Chechen pop star was tortured and executed on direct orders from the republic’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Zelimkhan Bakaev, 25, had been living in Moscow, where he had pursuing his singing career, and was scheduled to appear on a Russian reality TV music competition show a month after his disappearance. He returned to Chechnya to attend his sister’s wedding in August 2017, only to vanish without a trace.
Human rights groups warned that he may have been targeted as part of a series of kidnappings, detentions, tortures targeting gay men and other LGBTQ individuals, with some sources reporting people in military uniform had detained him. LGBTQ advocates and fans of the singer demanded that Russia — whose president, Vladimir Putin, gives Kadyrov a great deal of freedom and autonomy in exchange for loyalty — investigate his disappearance.
Chechen authorities subsequently claimed that Bakaev had fled to Europe from Russia. Two YouTube videos even appeared on the Internet in which Bakaev says he left Russia for Germany.
However, European journalists, including some from Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, analyzed the videos and determined that it had been staged and was actually filmed in Russia. The newspaper later confirmed that Bakaev had indeed been killed in the purge.
After Bakaev’s mother reached out to Kadyrov himself, Kadyrov reportedly made a statement in which he alleged that Bakaev had been killed by family members who were “ashamed” of his sexual orientation upon returning home — a not-altogether-uncommon occurrence in the Muslim-majority region, where “honor killings” may occur.
Some survivors of the mass detentions have claimed that Chechen authorities have been encouraging families of suspected gay men to carry out such “honor killings” themselves or risk retribution.
Kadyrov, in that statement, denied that Bakaev had ever been arrested or detained.
“Their son, due to the fact that they cannot say that he is theirs, they themselves did not save him. Now they say that he was taken away on the orders of Kadyrov, Kadyrov took him away. Did you see that I gave the order? Did you see him being caught? Did you see that he was imprisoned? Do you have any evidence [to] claim this?” Kadyrov said, according to Novaya Gazeta‘s Elena Milashina, who was recently attacked for her reporting on the detentions, torture, and murders of suspected LGBTQ individuals.
“They told him ‘come over,’ and when he arrived, apparently his cousins or second cousins confronted him and said, ‘You’re gay.’ … They knew what their relative was doing. Isn’t there anyone in the village, any man in the family, who can admit: ‘We did this?’ They know full well who their relative was,” Kadyrov said in his rant, in which he also referred to Bakaev as a “creature.”
In response, Bakaev’s father denied Kadyrov’s claims of a family-involved “honor killing,” telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian Service at the time, “No one took him home. He is a normal person, and not the one they want to make him in the eyes of the public. No one in his family laid a finger on him, and there was no reason to lay a finger on him.”
According to a report from the human rights organization NC [North Caucasas] SOS Crisis Group, since coming to power, Ramzan Kadyrov has employed law enforcement to carry out vicious persecution of gay men — in sharp contrast to how much freedom the LGBTQ community had enjoyed when Kadyrov’s father headed the republic.
Many reasons have been alleged for the purge, including:
- Unsupported claims that Russian activists had planned to hold a Pride parade in Chechnya.
- Reports of Kadyrov’s alleged anger over seeing videos of gay Chechens relaxing in clubs and bars in Moscow.
- The detention of a drug-intoxicated young man revealing a treasure trove of information on suspected gay individuals.
- The “outing” of an imam who was personally close to Kadyrov as gay.
Regardless of the reason, Kadyrov has targeted the LGBTQ community with an almost sick glee, directing authorities to carry out barbaric torture methods on prisoners to force them to disclose the identity of other LGBTQ people.
Chechen authorities have allegedly been directed to justify the killings, detention, or surveillance of gay men by claiming they are Islamic “terrorists” who pose a threat to Chechnya’s stability.
Further complicating the matter is that members of the Chechen security forces and individual citizens alike have realized there is a potential profit motive that comes from turning over suspected gays or LGBTQ people to police in exchange for rewards.
Those detained have their information entered into a special database, which police can then use to surveil, re-arrest, and re-torture gay individuals or blackmail them and their family members for “ransoms.”
Additionally, non-government actors may frequently seek to entrap gays using online apps and threaten them with blackmail, with the punishment for non-payment being tipping off security forces about a person’s alleged sexual orientation. As a result, being “out” as gay — even partially — is a risky proposition in Chechnya.
It is believed that such a situation befell Bakaev, leading to his outing before his death. The NC SOS Crisis Group reports that Bakaev was being monitored and closely watched by security forces during his travels to Chechnya due to suspicion that he was gay.
Although friends and acquaintances of Bakaev warned him of the risks posed to him while he remained in Chechnya, he stayed to take care of his sick mother and believed that his relative amount of fame as a singer would protect him from being arrested.
According to the report from NC SOS Crisis Group, when Kadyrov learned of Bakaev’s homosexuality, he was enraged, due to having personally met with the singer, shook hands with him and posed with him for a photo back when Bakaev was part of the song and dance ensemble “Capital,” whose members Kadyrov had invited to tea in a show of support for local artists.
Kadyrov then allegedly ordered authorities to “deal with” Bakaev for his deception, which reportedly led to the singer being tortured for a long time prior to his execution. When security forces turned over his body to his family, they reportedly ordered the family to have Bakaev “buried like a dog.”
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