https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2017-in-review/the-year-ru...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/27/russia-chechny...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_concentration_camps_in_Che...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/russia-rise-ho...
And calling Chechnya Russia is similar to calling Peurto Rico the United States. It's a subject of Russia, but is not what you'd call Russia. It's a 95% Islamic nation that waged a lengthy war of terror attacks against Russia and has its own independent government, rules, and laws which are driven primarily by Islamic law. You'll find nations driven by Islamic law tend to make Russia look like LGBT heaven.
Of course Russia is no such thing. It's illegal in Russian to distribute 'propaganda' for homosexual or bisexual advocacy in the presence of minors. And that in turn is used as a justification to prevent nearly all public homosexual or bisexual activism, though people are free to do whatever they want in private. In any case stating Russia is engaging in "mass murder of gay people" is something way beyond sensationalism and a reflection of how our media's efforts at creating a Red Scare has, arguably intentionally, driven people completely to the point of overt ignorance. It's like wartime propaganda, without a war.
So Chechnya is the same region of Russian Federation as any other region.
PS.
Look at folk culture, especially at folk songs. You will found that each region of Russian Federation has it own language for folk songs and none of them are in Russian language. It because Russian Empire was formed by clumping together nations and bolting Russian language at top of them by forbidding all native languages. (It's why Russian Empire was called as Jail of Nations).
In contrast, there is 15 thousands of folk songs recorded in Ukrainian(Rus`) language (200 thousands if variants are counted).
My understanding is that Chechnya is part of Russia in a similar way, but I'm not an expert there, so maybe I'm wrong. If so, then I should have said "murder of gays in the Russian Federation" or "in Chechnya".
But, I mean, I could have instead said "state-sponsored assassinations of journalists and political opponents in Russia".
The specific atrocities involved are kind of incidental to my point that if you decide to operate a DRM-enforced single-source app store platform, you are going to have to get into bed with authoritarian governments if you want to sell your platform in the countries they control.
(That said, I will google the relationship between the Russian Federation, Russia, and Chechnya a bit more, so that I can state things more precisely in the future.)
You misunderstand. They're saying that referring to the entire US (or Russia) when you really only mean Puerto Rico (or Chechnya) is somewhat disingenuous, and clouds what is actually being said.
Seeing your links, I went to wikipedia to understand what Chechnya is.
It appears to be an area in political unrest.
Right now only 1,9% people in Chechnya are russian.
So I guess it makes more sense to say "there is mass murder in Chechnya"?
And reading the first article, I don't even understand who is doing that, Chechnya people or russian people who live there? or russians from outside of Chechnya?
So my conclusion: what you're saying, is at least exaggerated and at worst just misleading on purpose.