As the world continues to not act on the atrocities being reported coming out of Chechnya after the Russian dependency allegedly rounded up gay men, tortured, and even killed many who were not able to flee, one brave man who escaped gave a first-hand account at a small gathering in Moscow.

Thirty-year-old Siberian Maxim Lapunov, who was detained for 12 days, says he was placed in a blood-stained cell where he was routinely beaten with sticks and humiliated by police. The man was working in Chechnya for two years when he was dragged into a car one night by two men, then interrogated by police in which he was forced to divulge the names of other men, and then brought into a prison.

He said that the police “…burst in every ten or 15 minutes shouting that I was gay and they would kill me,” he recalled, “Then they beat me with a stick for a long time: in the legs, ribs, buttocks and back. When I started to fall, they pulled me up and carried on…Every day they assured me they would kill me, and told me how.”

Similar stories have been reported by men who have fled to southern Russian since news of a “gay genocide” was being reported. But the world has still not taken action on the blatant disregard of the UN Treaty on Human Rights.

Chechnya denies all claims and government officials also say that no gay person has filed an official complaint (though, this is obviously out of fear for their own lives).