Oleksii Polukhin’s 64 days in detention started when Russian troopers stopped him at a checkpoint. They discovered that he’d been gathering details about Russian army positions to share with Ukrainian forces; additionally they found he was homosexual. Mr. Polukhin gave an in depth account of his detention to Projector, an Odesa-based human rights group. He additionally confirmed the main points to me in a collection of interviews.
It was Could 2022, simply 10 weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Polukhin lived in Kherson, a southern metropolis of round 250,000 those that the Russians conquered with blinding velocity within the battle’s early days. Mr. Polukhin, rail-thin after which 22 years previous, was on his solution to take footage of a Could 9 “Victory Day” parade organized by the occupying forces, which he deliberate to ship to a community sharing data from occupied territory. He had been retaining shut observe of the areas of Russian checkpoints, he stated, however this new one caught him without warning. He was compelled to unlock his telephone for the troopers, the place they found L.G.B.T.Q. Telegram channels, together with one which he ran.
Mr. Polukhin recalled one of many guards calling him an anti-gay slur and forcing him to strip bare on the road. (This can be a widespread apply by Russian forces, nominally to seek for nationalist tattoos.) After he was dressed once more, Mr. Polukhin stated that the troopers took the chance to humiliate him additional, calling over a random passerby to ask what needs to be executed with gays in his metropolis.
“I think that all of them should be killed,” Mr. Polukhin stated the person responded.
As soon as they’d had their enjoyable on the road, Mr. Polukhin stated the troopers compelled him right into a automobile and beat him, referred to as him homophobic names and demanded he hand over the names of different queer Khersonians. They drove him blindfolded on a roundabout route earlier than dumping him at a detention middle, which Mr. Polukhin guessed had been a Ukrainian police station. He stated he was left to stew for a time in a holding cell with 4 different prisoners, who informed him the guards had stated he was homosexual.
A Russian soldier quickly appeared with a crimson gown. “Wear it or we will beat you to death,” Mr. Polukhin recalled the soldier saying. He did his finest to behave unafraid, asking the soldier if he may even have a pair of matching excessive heels. Then he was taken for questioning, the primary of about 5 instances he can be interrogated throughout a detention that lasted simply over two months.
The beatings weren’t the one type of inhumane therapy Mr. Polukhin was subjected to. As soon as, he stated, Russian troopers compelled him to swallow items of a Ukrainian flag a number of days in a row. The Russians demanded he title different pro-Ukrainian and L.G.B.T.Q. activists; he stated they’d a number of names of L.G.B.T.Q. activists they’d already recognized and needed him to surrender their areas. Mr. Polukhin stated that they pressed him for the placement of the workplaces of L.G.B.T.Q. organizations, considered one of which was raided two days after he was taken into custody.
Mr. Polukhin later realized he was held in a detention middle at 3 Teploenerhetykiv Road, considered one of Kherson’s most notorious detention facilities. Torture seems to have been widespread in services throughout the town, Ukrainian and worldwide battle crimes investigators have since documented, together with waterboarding, electrocution and sexual violence that ranged from electrocution of the genitals to sexual assault.
Mr. Polukhin didn’t wish to talk about with me many particulars of what he skilled. However he described the detention middle as an surroundings the place Russian guards coerced intercourse from detainees, corresponding to requiring that they undergo sexual acts in alternate for the precise to bathe. Iryna Didenko, who oversaw sexual violence prosecutions in Ukraine’s workplace of the prosecutor common till late final 12 months, informed me Mr. Polukhin is considered one of 200 victims in a case towards seven Russians at present in a Ukrainian court docket. That case includes alleged abuses together with unlawful detention, in poor health therapy and torture. Ms. Didenko stated prosecutors are nonetheless working to carry costs in Mr. Polukhin’s case that might additionally embrace sexual violence.
I first interviewed Mr. Polukhin in January 2023, six months after he was launched from detention and simply two months after Ukrainian forces drove the Russian occupiers from the town. I used to be then a senior analysis fellow centered on queer folks in battle on the L.G.B.T.Q. human rights group Outright Worldwide. Mr. Polukhin was the primary queer survivor of Russian mistreatment I used to be in a position to communicate to in regards to the expertise.
However it’s now turning into clear that his story is only a first glimpse of Russian persecution of L.G.B.T.Q. Ukrainians. Throughout a go to to Ukraine final fall, I additionally interviewed a lesbian who stated she was twice detained and tortured by Russian troopers, together with virtually being compelled at gunpoint to have intercourse with one other lady for her captors’ amusement. I additionally heard a couple of group of males who had been pulled off a bus by a Russian soldier who discovered intimate footage of two males on a cellphone and threatened to execute them earlier than one other soldier intervened.
These tales are amongst these documented in a new report released on Friday by Projector and Insha, an L.G.B.T.Q. group in Kherson, with assist from Outright. (I collaborated with Projector in my position at Outright.) This work is simply starting, Projector’s director, Vitalii Matvieiev, informed me. There are 30 extra allegations not included within the report, together with a number of reviews of rape, as a result of Projector remains to be working to confirm them. Projector can be getting ready affidavits for survivors like Mr. Polukhin to undergo the Worldwide Prison Courtroom, which it hopes will examine whether or not Russians violated worldwide regulation by focusing on queer Ukrainians.
Investigators have an opportunity to construct a case in Ukraine not like something ever earlier than seen beneath worldwide regulation: that persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. folks constitutes against the law towards humanity. The focusing on of queer folks in battle — corresponding to ISIS making a spectacle of executing males accused of homosexuality by throwing them off buildings — has obtained a lot consideration lately, however no worldwide tribunal has ever held that this type of persecution violates worldwide regulation.
Jurists have executed painstaking work to clarify how current worldwide regulation offers the court docket the ability to research persecution on the premise of sexuality and gender identification. It’s time to use it. No matter whether or not investigations result in prosecutions, queer Ukrainians should have their tales preserved in order that nobody can ever deny how their neighborhood has been a casualty of President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambition.
In the previous decade, Mr. Putin has taught the world a grasp class on utilizing homophobia as a political weapon. Now he’s exhibiting us what homophobia appears like as a weapon of battle.
Mr. Putin embraced a so-called homosexual propaganda regulation handed in 2013 to assist shore up his flagging recognition at dwelling, a part of a rebrand of his political persona as a champion of the Orthodox Church, and a Kremlin ally backed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. campaign in Ukraine to attempt to drive the nation away from nearer ties with the European Union. Mr. Putin personally leaned into world controversy across the regulation earlier than the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, an opportunity to dismiss issues about human rights and pluralism because the ravings of Western degenerates.
The Kremlin doubled down on this technique when it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian state media unfold outlandish tales about L.G.B.T.Q. folks — as an illustration, {that a} queer neighborhood middle in Mariupol was “practically under the direct patronage” of President Biden and the U.S. Congress. Mr. Putin himself sounded more and more unhinged as his invasion slowed down, describing the assault on Ukraine as a holy battle towards the West’s “reverse religion of real Satanism” in a September 2022 speech asserting that Russia would annex Kherson and three different areas.
(The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, informed me that Russia’s home anti-L.G.B.T.Q. actions are “a different story” from Mr. Putin’s rhetoric surrounding the battle in Ukraine and that conflating the 2 can be like “trying to put separate stories into one basket.” He didn’t touch upon the allegation that Russian troopers have abused L.G.B.T.Q. Ukrainians. Russia’s Ministry of Protection didn’t reply to questions in regards to the allegations on this essay.)
The battle was an unprovoked assault on a sovereign state with its personal tradition and historical past, which the Ukrainian authorities has argued quantities to genocide. There’s proof that Russian forces are committing many different crimes within the course of: the mass killings of civilians, as in Bucha; the compelled deportation of youngsters, for which Mr. Putin has been issued an arrest warrant by the Worldwide Prison Courtroom; and widespread sexual violence towards each ladies and men. All of those allegations have to be investigated and punished.
However worldwide regulation should additionally acknowledge that Mr. Putin’s battle towards Ukraine is an specific assault on L.G.B.T.Q. folks and title that as against the law, too. Whereas Russia is way from the primary state to persecute L.G.B.T.Q. folks — Nazi Germany is estimated to have despatched 1000’s of queer folks to focus camps — it’s the first superpower to deploy homophobia as a serious justification for invading one other nation.
Worldwide regulation has by no means punished L.G.B.T.Q. persecution as against the law. Within the case of World Struggle II, for instance, the Allies not solely didn’t point out such persecution in costs towards Nazi leaders but in addition allowed West Germany to go away in place Hitler’s regulation towards homosexuality after they purged different Nazi provisions from West Germany’s books. L.G.B.T.Q. folks have been persecuted in lots of trendy conflicts, in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance. Whereas there was some effort to spotlight these conditions — the United Nations Safety Council mentioned queer persecution in casual hearings on ISIS in 2015 and on Afghanistan and Colombia in 2023 — it has up to now been toothless.
However issues could possibly be completely different in Ukraine.
The highest prosecutor of the Worldwide Prison Courtroom, Karim Khan, issued a groundbreaking policy paper in 2022 arguing that L.G.B.T.Q. persecution needs to be tried as a type of what worldwide regulation calls “gender persecution.” Written by Lisa Davis, a particular adviser to the prosecutor, the paper states, “At their core, gender-based crimes are used by perpetrators to regulate or punish those who are perceived to transgress gender criteria that define ‘accepted’ forms of gender expression manifest in, for example, roles, behaviors, activities, or attributes.”
However Mr. Khan’s workplace must prosecute somebody for L.G.B.T.Q. persecution to search out out whether or not this argument holds up in worldwide court docket. “Gender persecution” has been controversial for the reason that treaty creating the court docket was negotiated within the Nineties, and solely now, twenty years into the court docket’s existence, are the primary gender persecution circumstances in progress in The Hague. Prosecuting gender-based violence is commonly difficult as a result of victims could also be reluctant to come back ahead. That may be very true in circumstances involving queer victims. Even when they’ve left the area and are someplace protected to come back out, there are dangers of retaliation towards prolonged household at dwelling.
That’s what makes Ukraine so essential for investigators. Whereas many Ukrainians stay hostile to queer rights, L.G.B.T.Q. folks have been extremely seen in Ukraine’s battle effort, resulting in actual progress towards the safety of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Ukrainian regulation. Ukraine is the primary battle during which L.G.B.T.Q. individuals are more likely to be victims of persecution in an surroundings the place they could possibly be protected if they arrive ahead.
That doesn’t imply discovering these circumstances will likely be straightforward. Many individuals refused to be interviewed by Projector, fearing the Russians’ return or retaliation towards family members in occupied territory. Victims can also be discouraged by the truth that the Ukrainian judicial system merely doesn’t appear to have the capability to research the sheer quantity of battle crimes allegations. An affiliation of a few of Ukraine’s main human rights organizations reviewed a pattern of Ukrainian battle crimes circumstances and found that fifty p.c had been by no means investigated.
L.G.B.T.Q. folks have an added concern. “We know from our experience and from the experience of our clients,” Mr. Matvieiev stated, “that sometimes when you go to a police station and you want to place a statement or tell them about a case, and it is related to your sexual orientation, what you get is discrimination or homophobia.”
Queer Ukrainians’ mistrust of regulation enforcement could also be justified, urged Gyunduz Mamedov, the previous deputy prosecutor common of Ukraine, who established the division’s battle crimes and sexual violence divisions. Mr. Mamedov stated he ordered investigations of L.G.B.T.Q. persecution in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014, however nobody from the neighborhood would cooperate with them.
“We didn’t have a methodology or experience of that kind of investigation,” he stated. “Frankly speaking, I think we were not psychologically ready” for that work.
Are prosecutors psychologically able to do it now? I requested him.
“I am not certain of that,” he stated.
The prosecutor who led Ukraine’s sexual violence unit on the time of my go to, Ms. Didenko, acknowledged that regulation enforcement should work tougher to construct belief. (Ms. Didenko has since been promoted to deputy director of the prosecutor’s division of worldwide authorized cooperation.) She stated her workplace had executed rather a lot to make it safer for victims to report, together with operating particular coaching classes for prosecutors to protect the “human dignity” of survivors and dealing with nongovernmental organizations to construct neighborhood belief.
To make issues much more sophisticated, most of the reported victims of sexual violence by Russian forces in Ukraine are males, whereas assets to assist sexual violence victims have a tendency to focus on girls. Males concern a special type of stigma when reporting sexual abuse and which may be compounded for homosexual males, who could fear that others might imagine they deserved it — or, maybe much more horrifying, that they loved it. “Practically, in every case, there is a sexual abuse,” Ms. Didenko informed me. “The law enforcement system was not ready to recognize all the signs of the abuse.”
Even inside the queer neighborhood, folks have been afraid to speak in confidence to each other, stated Albina Yermakova, an Insha worker who stayed in Kherson throughout the occupation. “In the L.G.B.T.Q. community there was a certain paranoia,” she stated. “You never know who will be taken to the basement,” she added. “You couldn’t be sure what could you handle yourself under torture — how could you be sure about your acquaintance?”
Projector is now getting ready affidavits from Mr. Polukhin and different victims to undergo the Worldwide Prison Courtroom. Their accounts pose a problem to worldwide regulation: Is persecution on the premise of gender identification or sexuality even against the law?
Mr. Khan, the court docket’s third chief prosecutor, is the primary to say he believes that it may be. However worldwide regulation strikes at a glacial tempo, and its requirements lag far behind many individuals’s expectations of it. Nobody has ever been convicted beneath worldwide regulation for persecuting girls on the premise of their gender, for instance. Which will change quickly. A judgment is anticipated any day now in a case out of Mali in regards to the alleged persecution of girls whereas the town of Timbuktu was managed by Al Qaeda-affiliated teams from 2012 to 2013.
However it will likely be a serious breakthrough if Mr. Khan’s staff efficiently brings somebody to trial for persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. folks. Even significantly investigating circumstances of L.G.B.T.Q. persecution can be an enormous step ahead.
Whether or not the court docket pursues these costs towards Russian forces for violence towards L.G.B.T.Q. Ukrainians hangs on many elements that don’t have anything to do with the horrors victims skilled, like broad authorized technique, the standard of proof and the way far up the chain of command accountability may be proved. Both approach, prosecutors — in addition to the press and the neighborhood of human rights teams — should work to hunt out tales like Mr. Polukhin’s exactly as a result of there are such a lot of boundaries that stop victims from coming ahead.
The time has come to deal with L.G.B.T.Q. persecution as against the law towards humanity. This gained’t cease that persecution from occurring, simply because the World Struggle II tribunals didn’t carry an finish to genocide. Perpetrators imagine homophobia won’t solely allow them to get away with their crimes but in addition rally folks to their trigger. Fees will likely be a transparent sign that queer folks belong in a democratic world — and that the demagogues utilizing homophobia are those who needs to be thought of pariahs.
With out condemning the motivation of this violence, you don’t get to the logic that drove these crimes within the first place. And the failure to call the injustices of the previous encourages persecution sooner or later.
That, in the end, is why battle crimes tribunals matter in any respect. A century of expertise reveals they don’t appear to discourage future atrocities, nor are they efficient instruments for punishing wrongs after the actual fact. Struggle crimes tribunals can by no means make victims entire. They will’t carry again the useless, erase the scars or wipe away the recollections that hang-out survivors. Even when prosecutions are profitable, solely a handful of perpetrators are normally convicted, and such trials usually take so lengthy that the convictions really feel like far too little, far too late. Perpetrators usually escape justice for every kind of technical, authorized and political causes that don’t have anything to do with the horrors for which they’re accountable. And no punishment can ever match the crimes.
However prosecuting and investigating crimes towards humanity has a price that far exceeds the years perpetrators could serve behind bars. Legislation not solely punishes crimes, it’s also a software for setting the world’s requirements of proper and unsuitable. Within the wake of battle, tribunals present a discussion board for outlining the values a society will uphold in peace. Investigations and trials give victims an opportunity to engrave their expertise within the historic document in order that nobody can deny what occurred to them. We can’t condemn crimes we don’t title.
The world acknowledged this reality within the first trendy battle crimes tribunals, those following World Struggle II during which persecution of a specific group — Jews — was tried. And take a look at the historical past that adopted: Naming the Nazi genocide led to numerous actions to make sure the world by no means forgets the Holocaust; establishments had been constructed to doc and protect the tales of survivors around the globe; the U.N. adopted the Genocide Conference, laying the groundwork for prosecuting related crimes sooner or later; and workplaces had been finally created in lots of governments to fight non secular persecution and antisemitism particularly.
World Struggle II additionally confirmed what occurs after we depart victims out. As many as 200,000 girls and ladies are estimated to have been compelled into sexual slavery by Japan within the Pacific, for instance, however this was not charged on the Tokyo war crimes trials that started in 1946, and the mass rape of girls wouldn’t be handled as a critical crime beneath worldwide regulation till the Nineties. L.G.B.T.Q. folks had been among the many first victims beneath Germany’s Nazi regime; they weren’t publicly acknowledged as Nazi victims by a German chief until 1985, and West Germany convicted round 50,000 men earlier than its regulation criminalizing homosexuality was abolished.
The U.N. initially acknowledged that worldwide regulation would possibly sometime must punish the persecution of a broader vary of teams when it first proclaimed genocide against the law in 1946. “Genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns,” the Normal Meeting declared in a 1946 resolution, “whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds.” The phrase “any other grounds,” although omitted of the full treaty on genocide two years later, is a reminder that justice should at all times evolve.
There are vital variations between the focusing on of L.G.B.T.Q. folks and the genocide of a spiritual or ethnic group. However many campaigns towards queer folks we see now around the globe — in international locations at battle and at peace — appear to have what Maria Sjödin, government director of Outright Worldwide, has described as a “genocidal ideology aimed at eradicating L.G.B.T.Q. people from public existence.” Russia and different governments should not solely imprisoning, torturing and killing queer people, or encouraging their residents to take action on their very own, but in addition attacking queer cultural and political establishments, silencing speech about queer historical past and rights and going after L.G.B.T.Q. folks’s allies.
The tales we bear in mind from the previous are the inspiration upon which peace is constructed. And that issues far past Ukraine at a time when anti-democratic forces try to erase queer folks in lots of components of the world. If the world forgets how homophobia was was a weapon on this battle, what hope is there that queer folks will likely be included in a democratic peace?
J. Lester Feder (@jlfeder) is a journalist and a senior fellow on the Metropolis College of New York Faculty of Legislation’s Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic. He’s at present at work on a book project about queer folks and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Extra reporting by Illia Dyadik.
The Occasions is dedicated to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to listen to what you concentrate on this or any of our articles. Listed here are some tips. And right here’s our e mail: [email protected].
Observe the New York Occasions Opinion part on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.
