A new Uzbek media watchdog has urged international organisations promoting journalist's rights to pay more attention to the situation in this Central Asian republic where there is no independent press

A new Uzbek media watchdog has urged international organisations promoting journalist's rights to pay more attention to the situation in this Central Asian republic where there is no independent press and freedom of speech is severely curtailed. "Uzbekistan is becoming a dangerous place for journalists who dare to challenge the government," Yusuf Rasulov, head of the Association for the Protection of Journalist's Rights and Freedoms (APJRF), told IRIN in the capital, Tashkent. Rasulov, a former Voice of America (VOA) correspondent, said the aim of the NGO was to protect the handful of independent journalists working in Uzbekistan who are often victims of harassment, attack and threats from security forces. He was attacked and brutally beaten by a group of women, while police looked on, while covering a protest in Tashkent's huge Chorsu market in 2003. "Since then, as we have been trying to create this new NGO, I have been threatened and often watched by security people," he said. Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous state, is known for imprisoning opponents of President Islam Karimov's regime or forcing them into exile and widely criticised for slow economic reforms and growing poverty, particularly in rural areas. Western radio stations broadcasting to Uzbekistan and the region in the Uzbek language are virtually the only critical media in this Central Asian country due to strict state control of national and local broadcast and print media.