A teenager was pushed to his death from a ninth-floor balcony in Chechnya after his uncle discovered he was gay, it has been claimed.
The 17-year-old was allegedly thrown from the building by his uncle after his family was reportedly told to “wash the shame” of the teenager away, according to Russian media reports, who did not name the boy.
The account follows claims Chechen authorities were urging parents to kill their gay children, sparking an international outcry from human rights groups.
Police reportedly told parents of gay men to “sort it out” or the state will intervene, a man held in a “gay torture camp” in the region claimed.
The latest account of systematic LGBT persecution comes just a month after Chechen authorities allegedly rounded up more than 100 men they suspected of being gay.
Many were tortured and at least four are alleged to have been killed, according to a Russian newspaper and human rights campaigners.
A spokesman for Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, said reports that more than 100 men were detained in April was “absolute lies and disinformation” and claimed gay people did not exist in the region.
“You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic,” he told the Interfax news agency.
“If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has backed the Chechen government’s denials that men suspected of being gay are being detained, tortured and killed.
However, he has since ordered an investigation into what has been described as a homosexual “purge” after Angela Merkel asked him to address the issue at a joint press conference in Sochi.
