Watchdog

The Organization for Security And Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called on the Uzbek government to release jailed journalist Salijon Abdurahmanov, saying the charges against him were "made-up, and his trial did not stand the scrutiny of a fair procedure."

In a letter to the Uzbek foreign minister, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Miklos Haraszti, asked the Uzbek government to review an appeal against the 10-year prison sentence handed to Abdurahmanov.

A former RFE/RL Uzbek Service correspondent and a contributor to Voice of America and uznews.net, Abdurahmanov was found guilty on October 10 of possession of marijuana and opium, charges that he denies. When he was arrested on June 7, reportedly on his way to Tashkent to participate in an international seminar on media freedom, the police had brought a film crew to document the finding of a package of narcotics in the trunk of Abdurahmanov's car, according to the OSCE.

In his letter to Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov, Haraszti noted that no reliable evidence had implicated the 58-year-old Abdurahmanov in use or sale of narcotics, that Abdurahmanov had never been accused of a similar offense, and that a blood test found no evidence of drug use, leading the authorities to change the charge of narcotics use to possession with the intent to distribute. Moreover, his fingerprints were not found on the package containing the drugs, and the authorities' questioning focused on Abdurahmanov's journalistic activities, Haraszti wrote.

RFE/RL President Jeffrey Gedmin has also condemned the charges against Abdurahmanov.

Two unidentified men attacked Dalkhat Baydayev, a member of the embattled Council of Elders of the Balkar People, on October 14 in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic.

The attack took place in front of the building where the organization has its headquarters, according to kavkaz-uzel.ru.

The Council of Elders of the Balkar People, a grassroots outfit that aims to protect the interests of this ethnic group, was banned earlier this year by the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria under the pretext of the struggle against extremism, a decision that was seen by many Balkars as unfair and discriminatory.

Balkars have traditionally lived in the mountainous areas of the republic that are most suitable for recreation and tourism and hence seen by the authorities in Nalchik and business groups as economically attractive.

Attempts to transfer those areas under government jurisdiction -- viewed by the Balkar people as an encroachment on their economic interests -- have soured the relations between the Kabardian majority and the Balkars who constitute a mere one-tenth of the population of the territory.

Attacks on Balkar activists occur regularly in the North Caucasus republic. The leader of the Council of Elders of the Balkar People, Oyus Gurtuyev, has been beaten twice and is currently receiving treatment in hospital.

Moscow has so far been reluctant to interfere.

(By Aslan Doukaev, director of RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service)