(Tashkent, February 28, 1993) - Muhammad Salikh, member of Federal Council of the Radical Party, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Uzbekistan and president of the oppositional Erk Democratic Party, was arrested today in Tashkent. During the last elections Mr. Salikh was a concurrent of contemporary Uzbeki president Islam Karimov. No information about reasons of this arrest and accusation brought to Mr. Salikh, was submitted.

Muhamadd Salikh's arrest is only a part of a large campaign of repressions opened by the authorities against members of democratic opposition and human rights activists. Thus, on February 26 Vasilja Inojatova, poet and secretary of People's Democratic Movement "Birlik" was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for writing a poem "insulting" Mr. Karimov. In January to three years of prison was sentenced Mr. Abdumannob Pulatov, president of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. In December 1992 he was kidnapped by agents of Uzbeki secret services in the capital of neighboring Kyrgyzstan just after closing an international human rights conference.

Although Mr. Pulatov and Mrs. Inojatova were released after the trial on the amnesty connected with anniversary of Uzbekistan's state independence, not less than five political prisoners (besides Muhammad Salikh) still remain in prison. They are Mr. Pulat Ahunov (ex-member of the commission of the USSR Supreme Soviet on the investigation of the August coup) and four activists of Birlik Movement which forbidden by the authorities on January 18 this year: Babur Shakirov, Hazratkul Hudayberdyev, Atanazar Aripov and professor Alim Karimov.