My Safe Uzbek Closet


I was completely in the closet and extremely careful always in Uzbekistan, though I began to relax after a few years of being there. Why, you ask? First there was the law, which, though it was ridiculous, still set the atmosphere in the country. Besides the law’s threat of incarceration – being gay was socially dangerous…Foremost, I was scared for my life.

I’d heard from an older gay American man here that only a few months before I had arrived in country, and before he had as well, that there had been a gay Fulbright scholar living in Tashkent. He hung out with local gays – he found out where they were, became friends with them, apparently even took their photographs and kept a scrapbook with them, with their names and numbers.

The guy was later murdered in his apartment. Apparently it was not gay-related, just some guys who wanted to rob his apartment, expecting to find money, maybe a VCR…people always assumed that Americans are rich.

After that, I was told, the police began rounding up gay people in the places where they gathered (apparently, at the time I didn’t know, there were certain cafes, toilets, public parks, and saunas – the older American guy had an interesting UN unofficial report about homosexuality in Uzbekistan that he showed me that detailed all this) and would bring them in for interrogation.

Given the level of police corruption, they most likely shook these folks down for bribes, so that they didn’t wind up being tortured in police custody, as is often the case. And for those who feared it, they could blackmail people – and out them among their families or at their place of work.

It was impossible to confirm any of this, as there is nothing on the US state department’s website. But as time went on, as I met more gay men in Tashkent and asked them about this, they were aware of the case – they were aware of people who had been called in to the police in the investigation.  ¶ 5:07 PM