Hemliga, krypterade och skyddade kanaler på telegram är digitala mötesplatser för LGBTQ+-communityn. Människor som annars har det mycket svårt i dagens Ryssland.
TIMOFEY SOZAEV LEFT Russia in September 2019. After nearly 20 years as an LGBTQ+ rights activist, cofounding several organizations, he found out, while visiting friends in the United States, that the Kremlin had become aware of his advocacy work. He didn’t go back.
It wasn’t an easy decision. Sozaev knew that not returning would mean “handing over everything that I love and that is valuable to me to the enemy: obscurantist homophobes, an inhuman political regime that will stop at nothing.” Still, while he was in the US, he realized he was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, hypervigilance, problems sleeping, poor concentration. They got worse as the day of his scheduled return approached. “My psyche and body just told me ‘no,’” he says. He applied for asylum.
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