This article has taken half a year to write. And it’s not because there’s nothing to say about the LGBT community in Uzbekistan. On the contrary, you could write a whole novel on the subject. But I wanted to show people’s stories, daily lives, how they identify themselves and the problems they have to deal with every day.
This is where it got difficult. Most of the people I met refused to talk about their lives, even on condition of complete anonymity. The main reasons were distrust and fear of the consequences. Uzbekistan is one of the few remaining countries where sex between men is still criminalised, and can be punished by a three to five year prison sentence. There are no accessible statistics on how many investigations have been opened. But in the course of conversations and interviews it’s become obvious that this criminalisation is widely used to blackmail and threaten people.
Aside from prosecution for their sexual orientation, gay Uzbek men experience daily harassment from the public at large. Many of them fear not only for themselves, but for their nearest and dearest. Even if they manage to flee the country and receive political asylum elsewhere, their families and friends are at daily risk.
