grossproffit
grossproffit's JournalThey Starve You. They Shock You: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya
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Homosexuality is taboo in Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas of the Caucasus region in southern Russia. “This society is highly homophobic,” said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group and an authority on Chechnya. “Homosexuality is condemned. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin.”
Nevertheless, before the crackdown, gay men in Chechnya could at least lead social lives, if heavily closeted ones, Maksim said. They met largely in private chat rooms on social networking sites with names like the Village or What the Mountains Are Silent About.
“When two gay men meet, they don’t tell one another their true names,” Maksim said. Men met at cafes or at apartments rented for a night, he said. “Nobody suspected my sexual orientation, not even my best friends.”
The crackdown began after GayRussia, a rights group based in Moscow, applied for permits for gay pride parades in the Caucasus region, prompting counterprotests by religious groups, the men said. In Chechnya, it became something even worse — a mass “prophylactic” cleansing of homosexuals, the security service agents told the gay men as they rounded them up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/chechnya-russia-attacks-gays.html
Russian prosecutors to investigate reports of persecution of gay Chechen men
Russian federal prosecutors have finally launched an investigation into the reported mass abductions and torture of gay men in Chechnya.
The move follows pressure from Russian and international campaigners, in the wake of the revelations by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, that gay men in the predominantly Muslim southern republic were facing violent persecution.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/russian-prosecutors-investigate-reports-persecution-gay-chechen-men-1617318
US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan
The US military has dropped an enormous bomb in Afghanistan, according to four US military officials with direct knowledge of the mission.
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, nicknamed MOAB, was dropped at 7 p.m. local time Thursday, the sources said.
The MOAB is also known as the "mother of all bombs." A MOAB is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, according to the military sources.
They said the target was ISIS tunnels and personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/afghanistan-isis-moab-bomb/index.html?sr=twCNN041317n/a0446PMVODtopLink&linkId=36487260
Chechnya detains 100 gay men in first concentration camps since the Holocaust
More than 100 gay men have been detained in concentration camp-style prisons in the Russian region of Chechnya, according to reports by local newspapers and human rights organisations.
The arrests are being made as part of a widespread anti-LGBT purge in the area. The prison camps are the first to be established for LGBT people since the Second World War.
The information was first published by the Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, which reported that men were being arrested and kept in concentration camp prisons where violence and abuse is commonplace.
Repressions against the LGBT community began after an application for a gay rights march in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chechnya-detains-100-gay-men-first-concentration-camps-since-holocaust-1616363
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4397118/Chechnya-opens-concentration-camp-homosexuals.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/chechnya-gay-men-concentration-camps-torture-detain-nazi-ramzan-kadyrov-chechen-russia-region-a7677901.html
Egypt: 25 killed in explosion at Coptic Christian church.
A powerful blast rippled through a Palm Sunday service at a Coptic Christian church in northern Egypt, killing 25 people and wounding 60 others, state TV reported.
The explosive device at St. George Coptic church in Tanta was planted under a seat in the church, where it detonated in the main prayer hall, it said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
News footage showed people gathered at the church, singing prayer hymns. The video then quickly switches to bars as harrowing screams and cries echo in the background.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/09/middleeast/egypt-church-explosion/
How a former Westboro Baptist Church spokesperson overcame her hatred of Jews
The event, “Overcoming Hatred,” was the latest in the Times of Israel Presents series and co-sponsored by Jewlicious. Its aim was to show how civility and dialogue can bring even the most unlikely of allies together. (For those who missed it, the two will tell their story again on Wednesday night at the Beit Alliance in Jerusalem.)
Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church — one of America’s most-hated institutions, famous for picketing soldiers’ funerals and other sensitive locations and events. While perceived as homophobic and anti-Semitic to outsiders, the church view themselves as providing a service to otherwise damned souls.
“The church doesn’t see what they’re doing as hateful,” Phelps-Roper told the kippa-studded crowd.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-a-former-westboro-baptist-church-spokesperson-overcame-her-hatred-of-jews/
Tent City being shut down. There's a new sheriff in town. Arizona
Maricopa County’s new sheriff announced Tuesday that he’s shutting down a complex of jail tents that helped make his predecessor, Joe Arpaio, a national law enforcement figure.
Paul Penzone said at a news conference that the nearly 24-year-old Tent City complex will be closing in 45 to 60 days.
Arpaio opened the complex in August 1993 as a way of easing jail overcrowding. The barbed-wire-surrounded compound was part of a broader campaign by Arpaio to enact get-tough measures in his jails, such as banning cigarettes, creating inmate chain gangs and dressing them in old-time striped prison uniforms.
Closing Tent City complex would undo a critical piece of Arpaio’s six-term political legacy. Penzone, who defeated the 84-year-old Arpaio in November, is already phasing out his predecessor’s practice of making inmates wear pink underwear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arizona-sheriff-to-shut-down-famed-tent-city-jails-complex/2017/04/04/45d4836c-1980-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html?utm_term=.b49708c2ca0c
Syrian Gas Attack: At Least 100 Dead, 400 Injured
Suspected chemical attacks killed at least 100 people in Syria's rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday and left over 400 suffering from respiratory problems, a Syria medical relief group said.
The number of deaths is likely to rise, according to the Union of Medical Care Organizations, a coalition of international aid agencies that funds hospitals in Syria and which is partly based in Paris.
The group said the village of Khan Sheikhoun to the south of Idlib had initially been hit before strikes on the White Helmets emergency services centre in Khan Sheikhoun and the Al-Rahme hospital.
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/number-of-deaths-rise-to-100-injured-400-in-syrian-gas-attack-report-1677345
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