iStock/Thinkstock(MOSCOW) — Authorities in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya have reportedly kidnapped dozens of homosexual men in the past month and killed at least three as part of an organized roundup ordered against LGBT people there.

A respected Russian opposition newspaper, as well as a number of human rights activists, said it had information suggesting over 100 people accused of being gay have been arrested in recent weeks in a “prophylactic purge,” citing multiple sources in Chechnya’s security services and within the republic’s LGBT community.

The roundup has swept up men from across the country, including two well-known local television personalities, the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported.

The men disappeared “in connection with their non-traditional orientation, or suspicion of such,” the paper said. The paper said it had learned the names of at least three men who had allegedly been killed and suspected there were many others, but did not provide further details.

The government has denied the allegations.

But Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director at Human Rights Watch who specializes in abuses in the North Caucasus region where Chechnya is located, said she had also received information from her own sources confirming the large numbers of detentions and was compiling her own report. Lokshina described the purge as a “wave of persecution.”

Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project coordinator for the International Crisis Group and another expert on the North Caucasus, told The New York Times her sources had also alerted her to the alleged purge.

A majority-Muslim republic devastated by two separatist wars with Russia since 1994, Chechnya is regularly the scene of alleged brutal human rights abuses, with its security services accused by rights groups of carrying out extrajudicial killings and torturing opponents of its ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov.

It was already a dangerous place to be gay, where attitudes to homosexuality are deeply conservative and gay men are often shunned as bringing dishonor to families, with homophobic attacks common. Kadyrov’s government has recently launched a drive promoting what it calls traditional values, including alleged castigating of gay men.

A spokesman for Kadyrov Sunday rejected the Novaya Gazeta story as “absolute lies,” saying it was impossible because Chechnya had no homosexuals.

“You cannot arrest and repress those who simply aren’t in the republic,” Alvi Karimov, the spokesman, told the Russian news agency Interfax. “If there were such people in Chechnya, then the law enforcement agencies wouldn’t have to worry about them as their own relatives would have sent them to where they won’t return.”

Newspaper Novaya Gazeta said the roundups in Chechnya were triggered by a campaign by a well-known Moscow-based gay rights group, GayRussia.ru, that is seeking to challenge a de facto ban on gay pride demonstrations in Russia. The group has been submitting requests to hold the marches to local authorities in cities across Russia and then appealing the usually inevitable refusal to the European Court of Human Rights.

According to the paper, the group had not applied in Chechnya but in a neighboring republic, Kabardino-Balkaria. The application, as usual, was refused but was nevertheless met by a wave of homophobic counter-protests in the republic.

“Precisely at this time, the command was given for the ‘prophylactic purge’ and it went as far as real murders,” Novaya Gazeta wrote, citing its sources in the Chechen security services.

Novaya Gazeta and a rights group, the Russian LGBT Network, said they were submitting a formal request for Russia’s federal authorities to open a criminal investigation into the alleged detentions and killings.

There is skepticism whether federal authorities will intervene given Russia has passed its own legislation discriminating against LGBT people. The so-called “gay propaganda” law bans the promotion of “non-traditional” sexual orientations to minors, punishable by a fine or short prison sentence.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Monday said it was unsure “to what extent the information was true” and that it was not the Kremlin’s role to investigate.

“It is not a prerogative of the Kremlin,” Peskov said, according to Interfax. “If any actions have been taken by the law enforcement agencies, which, in the opinion of some citizens, were taken with some irregularities, these citizens can use their rights, file relevant complaints and go to court.”

Confirming details of the disappearances is difficult in the region, where speaking out against authorities can result in retaliation. But Igor Kochetkov, director of the Russian LGBT Network, a rights campaigning group, told ABC News that his network had received dozens of requests for help since February that appeared to tally with the campaign reported by Novaya Gazeta.

“We have information that there are dead,” said Kochetkov, adding that his group is looking further into the stories. “You need to understand that people are very frightened.”

Kochetkov’s network and another rights group have established hotlines for people feeling threatened to call and are offering aid to help get people out of Chechnya.

Lokshina, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said the Russian government had to intervene. “What’s been happening is absolutely lawless,” she said.

Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.