Video Depicts Horrific Attack on Gay Man in Russia

A video making the rounds on social media shows a gay man in Russia being beaten and raped with a bottle, by a group of men who wanted him to "repent for his sins," reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Reporters for the radio service said they had seen the video, which is on a mobile phone application called WhatsApp, and while they could not verify its authenticity, they did speak to a man who claimed to have participated in the assault.

The attackers stripped the man of his clothes, which they later burned, then handcuffed and beat him, held a gun on him, and forced him to sodomize himself by sitting on a bottle, which they then forced in farther by using a baseball bat. In the video, he is weeping and obviously terrified.

The assault reportedly took place Wednesday in the city of Novosibirsk, although police there told RFE/RL they were not aware of any such attack. The victim and the perpetrators were all ethnic Uzbeks.

"We made him sit on a bottle so that he repents for his sins and comes to reason," the alleged participant RFE/RL's Uzbek Service. "We did this to protect the dignity of Uzbeks. We live and work here, we are in contact with people of different nationalities. There will be no respect for us otherwise."

RFE/RL notes that the video is similar to one that surfaced in August on a Russian social networking site, of a group attempting to make a transgender woman sit on a bottle. She eventually broke the bottle and escaped her attackers. Both videos received many favorable comments online, according to the news service. There has been much violence against LGBT people in Russia since the enactment this summer of a law against "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations."