After Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya, a Witness Steps Forward
On Monday, the man, Maksim G. Lapunov, 30, who was caught up in a purge of gay men in Chechnya last spring, appeared before television cameras
in Moscow with a lawyer, the reporter who first broke the story for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta and representatives of human rights groups.
Mr. Lapunov recounted being bundled into a car, detained in the basement of a police station
and beaten by men demanding that he reveal the identities of other gay men.
Mr. Smirnov said prosecutors declined to escort Mr. Lapunov to Grozny, the Chechen capital,
to allow him to identify the police station where he was detained, and the perpetrators.
Last spring, Novaya Gazeta reported on a mass roundup of gay men by the regional authorities in
Chechnya, a mostly Muslim region in southern Russia that fought two wars for independence.
Mr. Smirnov said that filing the report with prosecutors in the North Caucasus, the region in southern Russia
that includes Chechnya, put his client at grave risk, not least because the police have so far refused to provide him protection as a witness.
At the news conference, organized by Novaya Gazeta
and Human Rights Watch, Mr. Lapunov, who worked as an event planner, said he intended to press ahead with his legal options, and did not plan to seek asylum outside of Russia, as some victims of the crackdown have done.