The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta has said it fears for the lives of its employees after it received threats from Chechnya in response to its reporting of the persecution of homosexuals in the southwestern Russian province.
The Moscow-based newspaper reported at the beginning of April that more than 100 gay men had been abducted by state authorities in the predominantly Muslim region.
The report alleged that at least three of those abducted had been killed.
Kremlin critics saw the report as further evidence that Moscow allows authorities in Chechnya to run the region – which has been consumed by two wars since the Soviet collapse – as a feudal fiefdom in exchange for separatist and radical Islamist sentiment being brutally suppressed.
In a post on his Instagram account, Chechen Minister for National Policy Jambulat Umarov called for the newspaper to apologise, saying that it was an insult to the proud Chechens even to mention the “mortal sin of sodomy” in their presence.
A few days previously, an assembly of politicians, Muslim clergy and clan elders in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, called for revenge.
“We promise that retribution will catch up with the hate-mongers wherever and whoever they are and with no statute of limitations,” a resolution adopted by the assembly read.
That motivated Novaya Gazeta to go public with its “serious concerns ... for the safety not only of specific journalists, but also of all employees of Novaya Gazeta without exception”.
Dmitry Muratov, Novaya’s editor, said on Friday that the resolution was an incitement to violence and that he was worried about his staff’s safety.
“This resolution is encouraging religious fanatics to retaliate against our journalists,” he said in a statement, calling on the authorities to protect journalists and stop anyone whipping up hatred against them.
Two of Novaya’s reporters specialising in Chechnya – Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estermirova – have been murdered in the last decade.
Neither case has been fully solved.
Human rights activists in Russia confirmed to DPA the veracity of Novaya Gazeta’s reports on the persecution of homosexuals in Chechnya.
The Chechen government rejects the accusations, with leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s spokesman, Alvi Karimov, saying earlier this month: “It is impossible to detain and oppress that which simply does not exist in the [Chechen] republic.”
The Chechen leadership is suspected of persecuting and killing opponents in other parts of Russia and abroad.
The Kremlin warned against vigilante justice on Friday.
Set up with financial help from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993, Novaya Gazeta is well-known in Russia for its investigations into official corruption, its reporting on Chechnya, criticism of the authorities and coverage of the opposition in a media landscape where most big-circulation newspapers are loyal to the Kremlin.
The Kremlin said it was following the situation closely and that anyone who thought Novaya’s report was false should contest it through the courts.
“We are against any actions that could pose a threat to the safety or lives of journalists,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said that reports about gay men being tortured in Chechnya could not be regarded as reliable at this stage however, and that the Kremlin was not aware of the police receiving any complaints on the subject.
Novaya said Russian investigators had so far ignored a request it sent to the authorities to investigate the contents of its report.