At least two members of the LGBT community have been killed as part of a new round of purges in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, an activist has told The Moscow Times.

Reports surfaced last week that Chechnya has seen a spike since December in detentions of women and men suspected of being gay. A spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had maintained that there are no gay people in his region, dismissed the claims as “disinformation.”

“I can confirm that two gay men were killed while being tortured,” the head of the St. Petersburg-based LGBT Network, Igor Kochetkov, told The Moscow Times on Monday.