Watchdog

An independent Kazakh editor says she is unable to find a publishing house willing to print her magazine focusing on official corruption.

Gulzhan Ergalieva, chief editor of the weekly "Adam Reader's," told journalists on July 2 she received refusals from 24 publishing houses in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty.

Ergalieva says the refusals are politically motivated.

She started her magazine after a decision in December 2012 by a Kazakh court to suspend her online news portal for three months.

That followed her reporting on the deadly clashes between police and protesting oil workers in the western town of Zhanaozen.

In 2001, a group of masked men broke into Ergalieva's Almaty apartment and tied her up before torturing her husband in front of her for several hours, leaving him handicapped.

The attackers were never found.

Based on reporting by KazTAG and Interfax

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Russian authorities to stop harassing a leading human rights group and investigate a recent raid on its office.

In a statement on July 2, the New York-based organization called on Moscow to look into a raid in late June on the office of For Human Rights on the pretext that the group's lease agreement had been terminated.

HRW official Hugh Williamson called the move "a part of the unprecedented crackdown by the Kremlin on its critics."

The raid coincides with a campaign against nongovernmental organizations.

Hundreds of them have been subjected to intrusive inspections to determine whether they are "foreign agents" as defined under a new law.

More than 60 organizations face sanctions and reprimands for failing to register as "foreign agents" and related compliance failures.

See RFE/RL's continuing coverage of the crackdown on NGOs