EU Expects Russia To Investigate Media Reports About LGBT Persecution In Chechnya

The European Union expects the Russian authorities to look into media reports about the alleged persecution of sexual minorities in Chechnya, the European diplomatic service said in a statement released on Friday

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2019) The European Union expects the Russian authorities to look into media reports about the alleged persecution of sexual minorities in Chechnya, the European diplomatic service said in a statement released on Friday.

The European Union is citing media reports about the alleged detention of about 40 LGBT individuals in Chechnya since December 2018.

"The European Union expects the Russian authorities to carry out swift, full and transparent investigations into the reported persecution ... It is important that the Russian authorities take into account the recommendations in the report and take steps to implement them," the statement reads.

In December, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) published a report stating that information in the media on allegedly serious human rights violations in Chechnya, in particular, the rights of LGBT persons, had been confirmed. The report says that the republic's authorities are authorizing illegal arrests, torture and extrajudicial punishments.

The Chechen leader's spokesman, Alvi Karimov, said that the OSCE report "does not contain a single line of objectivity," while its authors failed to double-check the reports by visiting the Chechen Republic themselves.

The alleged persecution was first reported by the Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper in April 2017. It claimed that men suspected of being homosexual had faced mass detentions in Chechnya, which Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has refuted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in turn, has said that there was no reason not to believe Kadyrov's statements to Putin that there were no such abuses in Chechnya. Russian ombudswoman Tatiana Moskalkova has said she had received from the newspaper the Names of people who had allegedly been subject to rights violations in Chechnya and submitted them to the Russian Investigative Committee.