MOSCOW, January 29 (RIA Novosti) – Gay and bisexual men in Kyrgyzstan are being systematically abused by police, an international human rights group reported Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch urged authorities in the Central Asian country to acknowledge the issue and investigate all allegation of torture.
“Gay and bisexual men in Kyrgyzstan already live in fear due to widespread homophobic attitudes, and the police are making a nightmarish situation even worse,” Human Rights Watch researcher Anna Kirey said in a statement accompanying the organization’s 65-page report.
Homosexual relationships were decriminalized in the former Soviet republic in 1998. Conservative attitudes among Kyrgyzstan’s largely Muslim population, however, leave many gay people vulnerable to blackmail and intimidation.
HRW’s report, “They Said We Deserved This,” catalogues extensive police abuse from interviews with 40 gay and bisexual men in four regions of Kyrgyzstan. They described violent attacks, threats or extortion after being summoned by police.
Many “reported ill-treatment in police detention, including being punched, kicked, or beaten with gun butts or other objects,” the report said.
“Several also reported sexual violence by police officers, including rape, group rape, attempts to insert a stick, hammer, or electric shock device inside the victim’s anus.”
Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry rejected HRW’s allegations as unfounded. Ministry spokesman Zhorobai Abdaimov told news website Kloop.kg: “Here everybody knows how to make unfounded claims about how their rights are violated, but let them provide the evidence.”
Abdraimov added that HRW should address cases it had investigated to the police.
One person interviewed by the rights organization, identified only as Demtra D, aged 32, said that he suffered rape and attempted rape on four separate occasions in police custody between 2004 and 2011.
In one incident in 2004, Demetra said that men who identified themselves as police officers grabbed him and a friend as they left a gay club, drove them to the city limits and beat and raped them.
“They didn’t want to listen to our pleas. They said that we are fags and deserve this, and that we don’t deserve to be on earth. After they raped us, they left us there,” he told HRW.
HRW called on Kyrgyzstan’s government to ensure that victims of ill-treatment received compensation and rehabilitation.
It said that just two of the gay and bisexual men interviewed about police abuse had reported their treatment to the authorities. Only one case had prompted an inquiry, but there was no criminal investigation.
Alleged police abuse of gay people appears to reflect a broader problem in Kyrgyzstan’s law enforcement, despite stated efforts by the government to effect reform.
After a visit to the country in 2011, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture noted some improvements, but cited testimonies suggesting that ill-treatment by police officers after arrest and during the first hours of informal interrogation remains rife.
