Kazakhstan urged to investigate attack on journalist

ALMATY (Reuters) - A U.S.-funded broadcaster has called on Kazakhstan authorities to investigate an assault on its local editor, saying he may have been attacked because of his reporting.

The broadcaster, Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), said its Kazakh service website editor Ermek Boltay had been beaten up last Sunday.

"Boltay, a young journalist whose most recent reporting focused on social unrest in Almaty, was hit with a glass bottle and kicked until he lost consciousness by unidentified assailants," RFE/RL said in a statement late on Monday.

"An attack on Ermek for doing his job would be not only an assault on RFE/RL, it would be an attack on press freedom and progress in Kazakhstan," RFE/RL President Jeffrey Gedmin was quoted as saying in a statement.

Media watchdogs have long criticised the Central Asian state of silencing independent media in a country where mainstream television and newspapers almost never criticise state policies.

Earlier this month another Kazakh journalist was arrested and charged with divulging state secrets, prompting calls from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe for the man to be released.

The former Soviet republic, run by President Nursultan Nazarbayev since 1989, has never held an election judged free and fair by the OSCE.

Last year RFE/RL accused Kazakhstan of blocking access to its website, saying the authorities were deliberately interfering with its news reporting.