Just over a year ago, the Russian investigative publication Novaya Gazeta caught the world’s attention by reporting on the Chechen government-run purge of suspected gay and bisexual men. Many might recall stories of brutal beatings, illegal imprisonment, torture by electric shock, and family-led honour killings traipsing across news headlines for weeks following the report. At last count, there were an estimated 27 people killed and over 200 imprisoned by the Chechen government’s efforts, with survivors now sworn into lives of secrecy and anonymity. The brutally interpreted law of the land normalizes the hatred of men and women who have brought shame upon the clan, meaning that even those who flee government detainment are not safe when they return to their families. Perhaps most chilling was the blatant denial of the existence of homosexuality in Chechnya, with President Ramzan Kadyrov’s spokesman claiming, “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic.”

As an independently-run federal republic of Russia, Chechnya has been granted significant freedom in its internal operations over the past decade in exchange for maintained peace and de facto loyalty to the Kremlin. As a result, follow-up activities have been varied, with some countries (including Canada, Germany, Lithuania and France) harbouring victims anonymously, and heads of state and LGBTQ activists putting pressure on the Russian government and the International Criminal Court to make good on promises to investigate human rights abuses. Despite international NGO efforts to safely evacuate affected individuals, many argue that one year out, without any meaningful investigations taking place, “nobody has been brought to justice.” The greatest difficulty stems from the fact that victims’ own families and the nearest avenues for escape are hardly more welcoming to LGBTQ individuals than the Chechen government.

Meaningful justice for Chechnya’s victims is more than bringing a few men in suits to court and handing out arbitrary prison sentences (although this, too, seems like a distant fantasy). Indeed, these individuals, many suffering long histories of self-hate and rejection from family members, do not have an easy reality to fall back on beyond the walls of Chechen holding cells. It is well-documented that any attempts to file complaints with authorities run the risk of inciting violent retaliation, partially explaining why it took months for the first formal victim’s complaint to go public. With many asylum-seekers living in fear and anonymity even after fleeing Russia, the opportunity to live a normal life and to cope with trauma effectively is one that lies in the careful hands of NGO staff and foreign government officials responsible for funding and designing resettlement programs. Canada has been one of the few model success stories to date, with 31 Chechens granted asylum as of September 2017.

Between neighbouring some of the most LGBT-intolerant countries in the EU, and devoutly homophobic Chechen diaspora populations that greet asylum seekers in many of their new homes, outed Chechen victims find themselves in the middle of a clash between tradition and Western influences. Though Chechnya’s population largely identifies as Muslim, the republic shares a great deal with its neighbours who embrace variations of Russia’s “anti-LGBT propaganda” laws, making social change a complicated process. The first wave of pro-LGBTQ visibility arguably began with Latvia’s foreign minister coming out in late 2014 and the country’s ensuing 2015 EuroPride event, marking the first time the event would be held in a former-Soviet territory. At the same time, however, the country unveiled a “morality clause” that requires teaching the constitutional values of family and heterosexual marriage in the classroom. As such, success stories in this region occur in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of pattern.

Any substantive momentum for social change must begin in Chechnya’s neighbouring countries that harbour less violent forms of LGBTQ oppression. Lithuania’s decision to publicly accept Chechen LGBTQ refugees has been an important first step, providing glimmers of hope for alleged gay and bisexual Chechens in a place not so dramatically different from Canada or the United States. Leaving victims with few options aside from abandoning their unaccepting families and fleeing their birthplaces and all things familiar, it is important that groups involved in resettlement make the effort to meet victims halfway through creative accommodations in language, location, job-seeking, religious, and psychiatric support systems. By setting these systems up closer to home, victims won’t necessarily have to completely erase all memories of their formative years. Sifting through the growing body of victims’ testimonies, one can truly begin to appreciate and respect the conflicting pulls of wanting to live safely and openly as one’s true self, while also wanting to make a phone call home or visit the local mosque.