S. Korea entraps gay soldiers

[reader]

From South China Morning Post

 

A watchdog group says South Korea’s army is hunting down and prosecuting gay servicemen after a video of two male soldiers having sex was posted on the internet earlier this year, stoking fear in an already persecuted minority group.

 

Military investigators looking into the case have threatened soldiers to out their gay peers, confiscated cellphones to check communication records, and even used dating apps to dupe soldiers into revealing their sexual identity, said Lim Tae-hoon, the head of the Military Human Rights Centre for Korea, which tracks down abuses in the armed forces.

 

South Korea’s army says it’s conducting a proper criminal investigation into soldiers allegedly involved with filming and uploading the video, which is a violation of the country’s communications laws and a military penal code that makes homosexual activity punishable by up to two years in prison. The army has denied allegations tha

 

“Military investigators used the information they gained from the investigation on the sex video to track down other gay soldiers in the army, starting by forcing the suspects to identify who they had sex with and then widening their search from there,” said Lim, who said a soldier tipped his group off about the alleged crackdown.

 

In conservative South Korea, gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people are harshly stigmatised and struggle to be politically visible, while a powerful Christian lobby immobilises politicians seeking to pass anti-discrimination laws. That stigma is amplified in the military, where most able-bodied South Korean men are required to serve about two years as the country maintains a large force in the face of potential conflict with North Korea.

 

Gay men are not exempt from conscription but are banned from engaging in homosexual activity while serving, leading to an environment in which they serve without revealing their sexual identity for fear of discrimination and reprisals.

 

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2089473/sex-tape-featuring-south-korean-soldiers-prompts-crackdown

[Guest ronnie4you]

Thanks for the report. I had no idea South Korea acted like North Korea at times.

[reader]

As disheartening as it was to learn that S. Korea--a first world industrialized nation--discriminates against gay servicemen, it pales in comparison to the torture and coercion taking place in Russian Chechnya. We tend to think that this sort of repression is limited to places like Saudi Arabia.

 

We're lucky, lads.  We get to enjoy the freedom to be ourselves. We get to debate the fine points and share our adventures. Reminders like the following makes me value my experiences and acknowledge their unique opportunity in this world.

 

From NY Times

 

GROZNY, Russia — It was supposed to be a night out. But for the young man who calls himself Maksim, as for scores of other gay men arrested in a pogrom this month in Russia’s Chechnya region, it pivoted into nearly two weeks of beatings and torture.

 

Maksim said it had started with a chat room conversation with “a very good old friend who is also gay,” and who suggested that they meet at an apartment. When Maksim arrived, however, he was greeted not by his friend but by agents who beat him. Later, they strapped him to a chair, attached electrical wires to his hands with alligator clips and began an interrogation.

 

“They yelled, ‘Who else do you know?’” Maksim said, and zapped him with current from time to time. “It was unbearably painful; I was hanging on with my last strength,” he added. “But I didn’t tell them anything.”

 

Gay men have never had an easy life in Chechnya. But the targeted, collective punishment of gays that began last month under its pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, is a new turn in the region’s long history of rights abuses.

 

Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, first reported the pogrom, saying that at least 100 gay men had been arrested and three killed in the roundup. Human Rights Watch corroborated those findings.

 

The sweep has been widely condemned by Western governments, the United Nations and rights groups. Activists in Russia have set up an underground network to spirit the victims out of Chechnya and to protect them from potentially violent reprisals from their families and others. The victims use assumed names in their everyday dealings.

 

The following account is based on interviews with Maksim, who is in his 20s, and two other gay men who were detained by Chechen security agents.

 

Homosexuality is taboo in Chechnya and the mostly Muslim surrounding areas of the Caucasus region in southern Russia. “This society is highly homophobic,” said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group and an authority on Chechnya. “Homosexuality is condemned. It is believed Islam considers it a great sin.”

 

Nevertheless, before the crackdown, gay men in Chechnya could at least lead social lives, if heavily closeted ones, Maksim said. They met largely in private chat rooms on social networking sites with names like the Village or What the Mountains Are Silent About.

 

“When two gay men meet, they don’t tell one another their true names,” Maksim said. Men met at cafes or at apartments rented for a night, he said. “Nobody suspected my sexual orientation, not even my best friends.”

 

Article continues:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/world/europe/chechnya-russia-attacks-gays.htm