Vitaly Ponomaryov (also spelled Ponomarev), a veteran Russian human rights advocate at Memorial Society for Central Asia, has been receiving some nasty death threats in relationship to his work in the region.

I have known and worked with Vitaly for years, and he is one of the most solid and dedicated researchers on human rights and humanitarian issues for Central Asia. Memorial Society is the leading Russian human rights organization devoted to keeping the memory of the victims of the crimes of Stalin and also preventing and responding to their legacy, the human rights violations of today under the Putin regime. Russians tend to be preoccupied with the human rights problems in their own country, of which there are no shortage, but it has been the hallmark of Memorial that they try to care about what is happening outside of Moscow, especially in places where the Russian government can be part of the problem.

Ponomaryov was particularly noted recently in 2010 when he did difficult, in-depth and dangerous reporting about the pogroms in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

Ponomaryov is a modest fellow who will not go around trying to get press attention, so it's up to his friends to spread the word and speak to their governments and ask them to intercede with Uzbek and Russian authorities so that they investigate these threats. These incidents are in a context of increasing threats to Russian human rights defenders such as Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow and takes place in a climate of crackdown by both Russian and Uzbek authorities on human rights groups.

I saw Sanjar Umarov, the former Uzbek political prisoner, instantly responded on Twitter when he heard the news and linked to BBC Uzbek Service which carried a report.

Now the Norwegian Helsinki Committee has published some material in English, which I reprint below:

Investigate threats against Memorial Central Asia staff

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee
was distressed to learn of serious, anonymous threats made against the
Central Asia Program
Director of Human Rights Center Memorial,
Vitaliy Ponomarev, on 12 January 2012 and urges Russian and Uzbekistani
authorities
to open an investigation.

Mr. Ponomarev is a prominent human rights
defender and researcher based in Moscow, who has led Memorial’s
important work in
Central Asia since 1999. On 12 January, he
received several e-mails from different internet addresses, containing
disturbing
death threats against himself and members
of his family.

While the threats were made anonymously, they
were sent from the same IP-address, found to be located in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan.
The emails themselves were made to appear
to be from ethnic Uzbeks residing in the south of Kyrgyzstan. However,
Memorial
reported that linguistic analysis
indicates the use of an Uzbek dialect used in Tashkent rather than in
Kyrgyzstan.

Human Rights Center Memorial has reported
the threats to the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) and the
Prosecutor General’s
office, requesting that an investigation
into the threats be carried out.

– Unfortunately, threats against human
rights defenders have become commonplace in the CIS. The reason for such
threats can
often be hard to pinpoint, said Secretary
General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Bjørn Engesland. – In Mr.
Ponomarev’s
case, the threats would seem to come from
persons who are concerned at the unusually high quality of his work to
expose human
rights violations.

More here on his past publications and current work.

FrontLine Defenders also has an appeal and further information.

Here's an interview in English with Ponomaryov by the NewsBriefing Central Asia, which explains an important thesis: that the thousands of people the Uzbek authorities have arrested and tortured on vague grounds of "religious extremism" in fact leads to instability, not stability.