Watchdog

Kazakhstan is calling for an end to international pressure over the case of jailed human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

Yermukhamet Yertysbaev, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev's political adviser, said others should not judge the case until an appeal of Zhovtis's sentence has been ruled on by the court.

Yertysbaev made his comments at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw on September 28.

A Kazakh court this month sentenced Zhovtis, the director of the nongovernmental organization Bureau for Human Rights, to four years in prison for manslaughter and violating traffic regulations following a July accident in which the car he was driving struck and killed a man on a highway.

Zhovtis has appealed his sentence but a date for the hearing has not been scheduled.

The OSCE, the United States, and the European Parliament have expressed concern over Zhovtis's case and human rights groups such as Freedom House have called his trial unfair.

This month protesters held rallies in support of Zhovtis in front of the Kazakh embassies in Moscow, Bishkek, and Warsaw.

Kazakhstan will take over the chair of the OSCE in January.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- A Russian journalist says he fears for his life and has gone into hiding after angering a nationalist pro-Kremlin youth group by writing an article criticizing Russia's Soviet past.

Aleksandr Podrabinek says he has received threats after publishing an editorial on the Internet about a Moscow restaurant changing its name from "Anti-Soviet" under pressure from local officials who said it was offensive to "Soviet veterans."

The article on ej.ru recalled the prison camps and crimes of Stalinism, and accused the current Russian authorities of trying to burnish the image of the Soviet Union.

Podrabinek, a former anticommunist dissident and freelance journalist, has since been criticized by Nashi, a nationalist youth movement that began under former President Vladimir Putin.

"I have received information from reliable sources that at a senior level the decision has been taken to settle scores with me by any means," he wrote in a blog post late on September 28, his first comment since going to ground several days ago.

"For the time being, in the interests of security, I am limiting my contact," he said.

Aleksandr Podrabinek

'Defiling The Honor'

Nashi said on September 28 it would picket Podrabinek's Moscow's home, accusing him according to Interfax news agency of "defiling the honor of veterans of the Great Patriotic War," the name by which Russians refer to World War II.

Nashi denies threatening Podrabinek, but demands an apology. It styles itself as a democratic, antifascist movement but has been accused by critics of engaging in harassment and intimidation.

New York-based press watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranks Russia the world's third most dangerous country for journalists, with 17 killed since 2000 including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on September 27 called for an end to the "hate campaign."

"The authorities must appeal for calm and curb this outburst of fury," the press watchdog said. "A man's life and respect for free expression in Russia are both at stake."

"This episode highlights how difficult it is in Russia today to challenge the official version of what happened during the Soviet era," it said in a press release.

Critics accuse Russia's leadership of trying to rehabilitate Soviet history, glossing over Stalinist mass deportations, gulag labor camps, and repressions in order to strengthen a sense of patriotism.

In his article, Podrabinek wrote that the Soviet past was "bloody, false, and shameful."

"The Soviet Union was not that country you portrayed in school textbooks and your lying media," he said.

The Moscow grill restaurant changed its name to "Soviet" earlier this month, saying it had been threatened with a fine.