Two people have been tortured to death and around 40 jailed during a new crackdown on the LGBT+ community in Chechnya, according to activists.
The Russian LGBT Network say the victims died in what have previously been described as “concentration camps for gay men”, the first such example since Hitler’s in the 1930s.
Homophobia is widespread in Chechnya, a predominately Muslim republic of Russia.
The authoritarian government, led by President Ramzan Kadyrov, has denied the latest reports. Two years ago it even suggested there were no gay people in the country.
In 2017, after reports 100 gay men were being held and tortured in a concentration camp in the town of Argun, the president’s spokesman, Ali Karimov, said: “It’s impossible to persecute those who are not in the republic.
“If there were such people in Chechnya, law-enforcement agencies wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
The latest detentions are all said to have occurred since December and activists believe it was sparked by the arrest of an administrator of an online LGBT group on the social media network VKontakte.
In a statement, Igor Kochetkov of the Russian LGBT Network, said: “We know that around 40 people were detained, both men and women. At least two people died as a result of torture.
“We also know that the detentions are conducted by law enforcement officers, and the victims are detained in Argun. The local police makes every effort to prevent victims from leaving the region or applying to the courts in the future.
“They take away documents, they threaten the victims with the criminal proceedings against them or their close ones, and they force them to sign empty forms.”
The latest reports have yet to be independently verified, but fit a pattern of persecution in the country that first came to light when Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that hundreds of men, believed to be homosexual and bisexual, were being held in secret detention centres.
The report from the respected campaigning newspaper claimed that Chechen authorities were attempting a “complete cleansing” of homosexuals.
This prompted a report from Human Rights Watch which said that high-level officials in Chechnya humiliated inmates during visits to detention facilities where gay people were allegedly held and tortured.
The Chechen men “remain at great risk of being hounded by Chechen authorities or their own relatives as long as they remain in Russia”, it said.
A subsequent report from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) used survivor testimony to conclude that “very serious human rights violations” had occurred in the republic.
Denying the latest allegations, Karimov told the Kremlin-backed RT website on Monday: “If even a single person were arrested, let alone 40, the entire Chechen public would have known. The claim that two were killed is even more absurd.”
President Akhmad Kadyrov inherited power in Chechnya three years after the assassination of his father in 2004.
The Kadyrovs are widely seen as puppet leaders installed by the Kremlin after Russia waged two brutal wars against separatists, killing tens of thousands of civilians.