Ramzan Kadyrov has invited newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit Chechnya to verify the veracity of his claims that there is no gay purge taking place in the republic.

On Tuesday, ally of Vladimir Putin and strongman Kadyrov posted on social media an accusation against European leaders.

The Chechen leader for the last decade accused them of relying on “false information” and invited the heads of France and Germany to visit his country “in a search for the truth.”

This comes after a Human Rights Watch report identified the speaker of the Chechen parliament, Magomed Daudov, as the person from whom orders to carry out the gay purge were issued.

Eye-witness reports from former detainees in the gay prison camps in Chechnya overheard guards mentioning Daudov’s name and some even claim to have seen the official in the detention centres where the abuse is reported to be taking place.

Kadyrov’s official stance that the reports of gay men being detained, tortured and murdered are not based upon the truth is in direct conflict with what the Chechen leader declared last month.

The strongman announced that gay men would be eliminated from his country before the beginning of Ramadan, which led to widespread calls for Russia to investigate the reports concerning Chechnya.

Following this investigation into the reports of abuse of human rights in Chechnya which concluded that there were no victims of such persecution, Human Rights Watch are calling for continued international pressure to be applied to Russia.

According to men who have fled Chechnya for fear of persecution, people are being confronted with their gay relatives and invited to kill them to preserve their family’s honour.

These men also revealed the horrifying beatings and electric shock torture that those who were detained had to endure.

Image: BBC