MOSCOW First, two television reporters vanished. Then a waiter went missing. Over the past week, men ranging in age from 16 to 50 have disappeared from the streets of Chechnya.
On Saturday, a leading Russian opposition newspaper confirmed a story already circulating among human rights activists: The Chechen authorities were arresting and killing gay men.
While abuses by security services in the region, where Russia fought a two-decade war against Islamic insurgents, have long been a stain on President Vladimir V. Putins human rights record, gay people had not previously been targeted on a wide scale.
The men were detained in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such, the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported, citing Russian federal law enforcement officials, who blamed the local authorities.
By Saturday, the paper reported, and an analyst of the region with her own sources confirmed, that more than 100 gay men had been detained. The newspaper had the names of three murder victims, and suspected many others had died in extrajudicial killings.
A spokesman for Chechnyas leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the report in a statement to Interfax on Saturday, calling the article absolute lies and disinformation.
You cannot arrest or repress people who just dont exist in the republic, the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency.
If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return, Mr. Karimov said.
