Editing Ramzan Kadyrov (section)

==Human rights violations==
Kadyrov has previously encouraged extrajudicial killings of homosexual men by family members as an alternative to law enforcement – in some cases, gay men in prison have been released early specifically to enable their [[murder]] by relatives. Threats from Kadyrov himself to journalists are also cited, but he has denied leading their murders.

In April 2017, international media reported that gay men in Chechnya were being arrested, detained and tortured as part of a region-wide [[pogrom]]. Russian President [[Vladimir Putin]] said on 5 May that he would personally ask the Russian Prosecutor General and Interior Ministry to help Kremlin rights ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova check the reported abuse. UK Deputy Foreign Secretary Sir Alan Duncan told the UK Parliament he had been informed of alleged plans to eliminate Chechnya's gay community by the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which started on 26 May 2017.

Chechnya has refused the reports, with its interior minister calling the allegations an "April Fools' joke". Kadyrov's spokesman Alvi Karimov rejected the allegations and described the report in the Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, as "absolute lies and disinformation", basing his refusal on the claim that "you cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic. 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." Vladimir Putin's spokesperson [[Dmitry Peskov]] also said that there had been no evidence found to support the allegations, adding that he had no reason to doubt Kadyrov's claims that no one under his rule has been persecuted for their sexual orientation.

In an interview with HBO's Real Sports aired on 18 July, Kadyrov said that, if there are any, Chechen gays should be moved to Canada, and claimed that pro-LGBT lobbyists are devils.