Watchdog

Uzbek human rights activist and journalist Umida Niyazova has received Human Rights Watch's Courage in Journalism and Human Rights award in New York. "This is a very great award for my humble work in Uzbekistan," she said after the ceremony.

A longtime activist and contributor to RFE/RL and other news agencies, a former translator for Human Rights Watch, the 32-year-old Niyazova was arrested in January 2007 and convicted in May 2007 on what many said were politically motivated charges. At her appeal hearing, she was forced to denounce the work of Human Rights Watch and publicly confess her guilt.

She was eventually granted an amnesty, but it was understood that she would not take up her human rights or journalistic activities in Uzbekistan again. She now lives in Germany.

Next week in Geneva, another Uzbek rights activist, Mutabar Tajibaeva, will receive the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.

Four ethnic-Azeri activists held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison are in the second week of a hunger strike to protest their detention, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports.

The activists and 15 others -- including women and children -- were arrested in early September at the end of Ramadan.

The other 15 have been freed, but journalist Alirza Sarrafi, teacher Mehdi Naimi, poet/journalist Said Mughanli, and writer Hassan Rashidi are still imprisoned. It is not clear what crimes they are being accused of.

The Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners reports that the hunger strike began on October 25.

Sarrafi, Mughanli, Naimi, and Rashidi are well-known advocates for cultural rights of ethnic Azeris in Iran, including right to native language education.