James Longman's confession of no help to Chechen gays

The footage about the visit of the ABC's filming crew and the confession of the journalist, James Longman, to homosexuality has led to the appearance of a large number of homophobic comments in the popular Chechen publics. However, some users have called for tolerance. The story of persecutions of LGBT people in Chechnya has not been forgotten, said Igor Kochetkov, the head of the Russian LGBT Network.

On October 27, the filming crew of the American ABC TV Channel visited Chechnya. One of the authors of the report, James Longman, confessed to Apti Alaudinov, the boss of the Chechen Police, to his homosexuality. Alaudinov said that in Chechnya, gays fear not the persecution by the authorities, but their relatives' reaction to their sexual orientation.

In the opinion of the residents of Chechnya interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, the journalist's visit to the republic to study persecutions of sex minorities will yield no results.

"Any attempt to study the topic of gay persecution not only in Chechnya, but in the Caucasus as a whole is doomed to failure. Europeans can't understand our mentality ... Alaudinov was right in saying that if a journalist asked someone if there were gays among his relatives, he would be beaten up, because it's a very taboo topic," said Lechi, a local resident, adding that he himself wouldn't "tolerate this" in his family.

Igor Kochetkov, the head of the Russian LGBT Network, did not rule out that journalists' visits to Chechnya could be dangerous.

Western TV channels have traditional interest in Chechnya; and while before they were attracted by the topic of war, now, the vector of their attention has changed to gays' persecutions, Mikhail Roschin, an Orientalist, believes.