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July 13-19, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 15
Chechen queer purge ignites again by Heather Cassell
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ussia’s leading LGBT rights organization has sounded the alarm that individuals suspected of being queer have begun to be rounded up in another wave of detentions and tortures in Chechnya. The news broke just before last week’s G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday while both were in Hamburg. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sat in on the meeting. The Russia LGBT Network’s emergency hotline, which was set up following Novaya Gazeta’s April article that broke the news of detainment and torture of presumed gay and bisexual men, received around 10 calls since June 24, the end of Ramadan, reported BuzzFeed. The network has evacuated about 40 gay men from the remote Muslim-majority region, placing them in temporary undisclosed safe houses around Moscow, according to media reports. One man arrived safely in his host country, France, reported the New Yorker.
Chechen LGBT purge
Monday, July 10 marked 100 days since the news first broke about the human rights atrocity and no action being taken by Russian and U.S. leaders, noted All Out, an international LGBT rights organization. Since Novaya Gazeta’s first story, the newspaper has reported an estimated six secret prisons where suspected LGBT individuals and others have been detained and tortured. It’s now believed that 27 people were killed in January, some identified as gay men, according to experts at Russian LGBT Network and Human Rights First, who reviewed the list of names recently
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LGBT data
From page 11
scenarios in order to learn how to respond to clients who may be reticent about answering the SOGI questions. The agency’s in-take forms don’t get to the SOGI section until after clients are asked for their age, ethnicity, address, and Social Security number. It is asking its clients who speak Spanish, Tagalog, and Chinese the questions, having had native speakers vet the translations. “My sense is we will have a lot of declines to state. My age and above they were closeted for a long, long time. They are concerned, rightly, about privacy issues and simply talking about it, especially some of the ethnic communities,” said Nolan. “There is a reluctance to talk about this. My generation is not used to talking about this; my generation didn’t talk about sex, we barely believed in it. Younger seniors may not be so concerned about it.” The DAAS employees were instructed they should not treat the SOGI questions any differently from the other demographic questions they ask. But they are to explain to people they don’t have to answer the questions, and no matter what they decide to do, it won’t affect the services they receive. “We wanted to normalize it,” said Nolan, adding that the staff was instructed not to say, “Now we have some very sensitive questions” when they got to the SOGI section. “We are trying to make sure people feel welcome and understood,” said Nolan. “We began this with, when asking demographic questions, do a prelude to it: ‘I need to ask you a few
A.P.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President Donald Trump met for the first time July 7 on the sidelines at the G-20 summit.
published by Gazeta, according to media reports. New evidence is surfacing that men aren’t the only targets of Chechen authorities. While many human rights advocates have stated queer women haven’t been targeted, Chad Griffin, president of Human Rights Campaign, wrote in a July 5 letter to Trump, that lesbians and women assumed to know gay men are also being swept up in the crackdown. HRC published a 43-page report, “They Have Long Arms and They Can Find Me,” documenting human rights violations perpetrated by Chechen officials by gay survivors and reporters covering the story. Lesbian Russian journalist and author Masha Gessen corroborated HRC’s findings in her article in the New Yorker when Ali, a gay man using an alias who escaped Chechnya with the help of the Russian LGBT Network, described the chambers in which he was tortured. Ali told Gessen that he saw both men and women who were screaming as they were being “beaten with fists and batons,” in a chamber deep in a basement. Gessen, who lives in Brooklyn with her family, interviewed several men who were living in the undisclosed safe houses in
Moscow waiting to be evacuated. “My colleagues and I have seen first-hand the pain and suffering of those who have survived the horror of illegal arrests and torture [in Chechnya],” Igor Kochetkov of the Russian LGBT Network said July 6 in a joint news release with All Out.
questions designed to help the entire community.’” The agency plans to evaluate the responses it receives to the SOGI questions in a few months but has asked its staff to report any issues they are seeing sooner so they can be addressed. “We can modify it as we go along and be an example for the other departments,” said Nolan. The city’s Department of Public Health, with more than 8,000 employees in various divisions and settings, from community clinics and the hospital emergency room to the county jail, plans to begin its training about asking SOGI questions in the coming months. It is still figuring out when clients will be asked SOGI questions and how to incorporate them into the new electronic health record system it will be transitioning to next year. Health officials are also still determining the best way to collect SOGI data when a person is being seen at the emergency room or a mental health clinic, situations where the individual may be unable to answer such questions. The department plans to select up to nine sites to test pilot how it asks the SOGI questions so it can make any necessary adjustments or tweaks before rolling it out across the entire agency. “We are not going full steam ahead in terms of tomorrow everybody will be asked this question. We are starting the process to get our staff ready and then the community ready to hear these questions in a non-threatening way,” said Dr. Ayanna Bennett, director of interdivisional initiatives at the health department. “It will be a slow rollout.” Bennett, who is straight, chairs
the department’s SOGI Steering Committee, comprised of 15 to 20 people from different sections within the public health agency. Some sections, such as those focused on HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, have been collecting SOGI data for decades, while for others it will be the first time. “We do have some agreement on how the questions will be asked. The difference will be in who asks them and in what circumstances,” said Bennett. It is important for a person’s health care provider to know what pronouns their patients use and if their name they are called differs from that on their insurance, Bennett noted, as well as if their gender is different from the one they were assigned at birth. “We have clinical reasons to know all of those things. They impact the care you get in certain circumstances,” she said. “It needs to be explained to people why we are asking it. It doesn’t have a impact if you are seeing a podiatrist, but it does when seeing a gynecologist.” For the last 12 years Bennett has been asking the adolescent patients she sees if they are LGBT. Over that time she has noticed a difference in their reactions to the question. “It has become uninteresting to them,” she said. “It used to elicit an eyebrow and now not at all. Now they are much quicker to answer than they used to.” She suspects the same will be true of the general public as people become conditioned to being asked the SOGI questions. “What we find when we start is not what we will find two or three years down the line,” Bennett predicted.
Russian failure
Kochetkov called out Russia for “failing in its responsibility to allow its own citizens to live in safety” and for failing to “hold anyone to account for the appalling abuses that have already taken place.” In May, following a month of international outcry, Putin reportedly acquiesced to the pressure by agreeing to investigate the situation in Chechnya after Kremlin officials and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov denied the widespread detainments. However, the organizers of the Russian LGBT Network issued a statement June 26 stating that Russian officials were derailing the investigation. “There is strong evidence showing that the Russian authorities have no interest in initiating a just and transparent investigation and lead the public (both Russian and international) into an error,” wrote the organizations’ leaders in the statement citing the promotion of a high-ranking officer and the country’s human rights ambassador refusing to visit Chechnya. In May, Colonel of Justice Igor
Sobol, an expert in Chechnya, was assigned to investigate claims of LGBT persecution. He was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Polivanov, who has no experience in the region. That same month, Russia’s human rights ambassador, Tatyana Moskalkova, who was also assigned to investigate, publicly stated that she had no reason to go to Chechnya personally because no LGBT person from Chechnya appealed to her office, according to heads of the Russian LGBT Network. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters July 6, “If there is such a question [on gay rights] then there will be an answer,” reported Russian news agency Tass. “We will inform you if this issue is raised,” he said.
Trump ignores Chechnya in Putin meeting
Trump reportedly didn’t raise the question during his more than twohour meeting with Putin on the sidelines at the G-20, according to media reports. Leading up to the summit, 25 U.S.- and United Kingdom-based international LGBT and human rights organizations urged Tillerson and Trump to address the humanitarian crisis in Chechnya during meetings with Putin. The global LGBT and human rights advocates called out Tillerson and Trump for their sharp turn away from America being a leader in human rights to embracing “a range of dictators.” White House officials admitted that Trump wasn’t even “aware” of the persecution of LGBT Chechens, according to a July 7 GLAAD news release. t
To read the full article please visit us at www.ebar.com Got international LGBT news tips? Contact Heather Cassell at oitwnews@gmail.com.
“People have to hear it a few times to decide what they think about it.” When he worked for a legal assistance agency in San Francisco whose clients were mostly gay men, Owen Stephens said he would always ask if people identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. “Sometimes people didn’t want to answer the question,” said Owens, 39, who is gay. Rarely has he been asked such a question in his personal life, said Owens, explaining that he purposefully picked a gay doctor as his primary care physician so he would feel comfortable disclosing his sexual orientation. As long as such personal information is kept safe, Owens said he has no problem having SOGI questions be asked on government forms. “We have to be visible somehow, and data is a way to be visible,” said Owens of the LGBT community. “I would hope they always ask it in a neutral enough way what is your sexual orientation. They should let them answer it, and if they don’t know what to say, give them an option.” Wallner, with the network of LGBT service providers, stressed that SOGI data collected by local and state agencies is kept confidential. “If you are ever concerned about your privacy, you have every right to ask about that and to make sure you feel assured any information you want to keep confidential is kept confidential,” she said. t This article is the first of three looking at LGBT data collection and was written as part of a California Health Journalism Fellowship project with the University of Southern California-Annenberg Center for Health Care Journalism.
Legal Notices>> SUMMONS LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: COOMBS PROPERTIES, ET AL.” YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF: ANGIE BAGDASARYAN AND ZARUI ADJIAN CASE NO. LC104582 Notice: You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below. You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons and legal papers are served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp) your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court. There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www. lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case. The name and address of the court is: Los Angeles Superior Court 6230 Sylmar Avenue - Van Nuys, CA 91401. The name, address, and telephone number of the plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is:
MARVIN LEVY, ESQ.; (SBN 101042) 12340 SANTA MONICA BLVD., STE. 234, LA, CA 90012 (310) 571-2320. Date: 09/01/2016; Clerk, by Sherri R. Carter, Executive Office Clerk.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-17-553111
In the matter of the application of: IN HWAN HO, 880 43RD AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner IN HWAN HO, is requesting that the name IN HWAN HO, be changed to IN HWAN HEO. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514, Room 514 on the 10th of August 2017 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037639900
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: ACRI DDC, 759 20TH AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DAVID ACRI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/14/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/14/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037645500
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: A-TRACK CLEANERS, 5442 GEARY BLVD, SAN FRANCISO, CA 94121. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed LE HIEN THNG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/19/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/19/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037642200
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: KANNON GOODS, 1201 PACIFIC AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed HOVIN WANG. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/16/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/16/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037631000
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PEREZ CONSTRUCTION, 551 44TH ST, RICHMOND, CA 94805. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed EVERSON PEREZ. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/08/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/08/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037626400
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SAN FRANCISCO ATM NETWORK; SF ATM NETWORK, 3473 17TH ST #1, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JACOB MALEKZADEH. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/05/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-037629100
The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PERFECT EDGE, 562 BANKS ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALIREZA SABOURI. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/07/17. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/07/17.
JUNE 22, 29, JULY 06, 13, 2017