BBC film on persecution of gays in Chechnya screened in Russia

The documentary "Welcome to Chechnya" by the American director David France, which presents stories of persecutions of gays and lesbians in the republic, has become available to Russian spectators. Igor Kochetkov, the director of the "Russian LGBT Network" has treated the persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya as a crime against humanity.

The main film heroes are real homosexuals who have become victims to the "witch hunt" in Chechnya. It shows, in the most detailed way, the story of Maxim Lapunov, one of two LGBT people who filed complaints against their tormentors.

Mr France has noted that the film mission was to make the world aware of the events in Chechnya.

Igor Kochetkov has linked the large-scale violence in the republic with the Chechen Wars of the 1990s and blamed Russian law enforcers for it.

Chechnya is "a separate totalitarian enclave where laws are in force in a very limited scope," says Ekaterina Sokirianskaya, the head of the Centre for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. "The only law is Ramzan Kadyrov's order," she said.

Ms Sokirianskaya has noted that this regime is based on fear and "political impunity".

LGBT people are a control group, on which they test restrictions on the rights of all citizens; and soon this experience will be applied to all the citizens, Dmitry Gudkov, a politician, believes.