Tag: The Caucasus

Europe

Helsinki protests Trump-Putin lovefest

A leading LGBT rights group projected messages for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in giant letters on the wall of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki hours before the summit between the two leaders was set to open. “Trump and Putin: Stop the Crimes Against Humanity in Chechnya,” read one message displayed by the Human Rights Campaign. Other projections read: “The whole world is watching” and “Silence is deadly.” The group said in a tweet ahead of the action: “Last year, reports surfaced of Chechen authorities rounding up and detaining more than 100 men who were suspected of being gay or bisexual and 20 have been murdered. Today HRC confronted Trump and Putin in Helsinki over these crimes against humanity.” The statement continued: “For more than 15 months, @realDonaldTrump has refused to publicly condemn the systematic torture, abuse and murder of LGBTQ people occurring in Chechnya as Vladimir Putin has licensed the violence to continue.” (Photo: Human Rights Campaign via Twitter)

The Caucasus

Protest, polarization in ex-Soviet Georgia

A massive protest encampment erected in front of Tbilisi’s parliament building demanding the resignation of Georgia’s government prompted President Georgi Margvelashvili to meet with demonstration leaders and remove his chief prosecutor. The latest round of mass protests began over accusations of a government cover-up in the slaying of two youths. But pressure was building for weeks. The first protests broke out in mid-May to demand drug legalization after a series of police raids on nightclubs. Gay rights advocates took to the streets to mark Inter­na­tion­al Day Against Homo­pho­bia—to be confronted by gangs of neo-Nazis, who tried to intimidate them into dispersing, giving Hitler salutes and chanting “death to the enemy!” The protest wave indicates a new generation tired of rule by ex-Soviet elites coming of age—but starkly divided between more liberal and harshly reactionary currents. (Photo: OC Media)

The Caucasus

Chechen police state turns ire on druggies

Last year, horrific reports emerged from the southern Russian republic of Chechnya that authorities were rounding up gays in detainment camps and subjecting them to torture —the first time this kind of thing has happened in Europe since Nazi Germany. Now the reign of terror is being extended to drug users and small-time dealers, who are facing torture at the hands of Chechen security forces as part of the same ultra-puritanical campaign. Reports describe electric current being applied to suspects to induce them to “confess.” No one has survived without confessing, victims are told. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

The Caucasus
helsinki

Chechnya: concentration camps for gays?

Alarming reports are emerging that Chechyna has opened “the first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler,” following a “gay purge” in the southern Russian republic. (Photo: Human Rights Campaign via Twitter)

The Caucasus
Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh in Russo-Turkish game

As the worst fighting since a 1994 truce breaks out in Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey’s President Erdogan asserts himself as protector of Azerbaijan, pledging to back Baku “to the end.” (Map: Wikipedia)