The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBT+ civil rights organisation, have released a new report which confirms the persecution, torture and execution of LGBT+ people in Chechnya.

While many sources have already spoken about the gross human rights violations, this new report states that “The evidence clearly shows that the allegations of very serious human rights violations in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation have been found confirmed. This concerns in particular allegations of harassment and persecution, arbitrary or unlawful arrests or detentions, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.”

The report states that LGBT+ people were detained in makeshift prisons, where they were tortured and in some cases killed, Chechen officials also encouraged families to murder suspected gay relatives.

The new report was authorised by the 16 member countries of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) including Ireland. HRC global director Ty Cobb said, “The Russian government can no longer deny the existence of these barbaric anti-LGBTQ crimes against humanity in Chechnya. World leaders, including the Trump-Pence administration, must take action to hold Russia and those responsible for the crimes accountable and to ensure these atrocious crimes have been stopped and never happen again.”

The report continues: “The situation has worsened as the climate of intimidation has increased to the extent that hardly anybody in Chechnya feels free to speak about the human rights problems any more. Human rights organizations and investigative media instead of being protected face various forms of harassment and attacks, which are not investigated. This appears to be in line with a general feeling of lawlessness and the impression that the repressive state apparatus is free to act as it wants, as it is protected by impunity.”

Vladimir Putin had previously announced there would be an investigation but nothing has been forthcoming, and Donald Trump has made no mention of it at all. Most worrying, Chechen Leader Ramzan Kadyrov has denied there being any LGBT+ people in Chechnya, but said that if they did exist they would have been forced to leave the country or have been killed by their families.