Watchdog

KHABAROVSK, Russia -- The editor in chief of an independent Russian news website says he has been detained at the airport in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.

Oleg Potapenko of the online news portal Amurburg.ru told his colleagues by phone on November 12 that he and his partner had been detained while heading to Hong Kong.

Potapenko said police confiscated their mobile phones, laptops, and tablets, saying they might contain classified information.

Potapenko, who is openly gay, was held for four hours and interrogated by police at Khabarovsk's airport in July upon his return from a forum of nongovernmental organizations in Georgia.

At the time, Potapenko called the incident "psychological pressure.”

Amurburg.ru has reported about the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Army has been battling pro-Russian separatists.

Authorities at a penal colony in Kazakhstan have refused to let inmates' relatives see their loved ones following reports that the armed forces put down a prison riot.

Anxious relatives had gathered near the OV-156/3 prison in the eastern city of Oskemen, demanding access to the inmates to assuage fears they had been subjected to violence by the troops.

Prison officials told RFE/RL that the armed forces had been used on November 10 to "conduct routine checks (and) confiscate banned items, such as mobile phones and blades."

Officials told the relatives that day that two inmates had been hospitalized after they maimed themselves to protest the presence of the armed forces.

Kazakh inmates have rioted several times in recent years to protest jail conditions, sometimes maiming themselves to draw attention to their plight.