Uzbek authorities on 13 August deported Igor Rotar, a correspondent for Forum 18, the Norway-based religious-freedom organization reported on its website (http://www.forum18.org) the same day. The report noted that Uzbek authorities, who had detained Rotar upon his arrival at Tashkent airport on 11 August, officially deported Rotar only after unsuccessful attempts to force him \"to buy his own ticket [out of Uzbekistan] and claim that he was not deported.\" Forum 18 noted, \"Uzbekistan\'s unjustified detention and formal deportation of a widely respected religious freedom reporter, along with the continued crackdown on the independent media, raises many serious issues of freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to defend human rights and the safety of journalists carrying out their legitimate work.\" In an interview with fergana.ru on 14 August, Rotar, a Russian citizen who works as a correspondent for Forum 18 and is a contributor to the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation, said that Uzbek security personnel told him: \"How long are you going to get on our nerves? Buy a ticket wherever you want, or else we\'ll beat you up.\" Rotar said the security officers who detained him did not use force against him, however. The correspondent, who has written extensively about issues of religious freedom in Uzbekistan for Forum 18, planned to investigate alleged repression against Protestants in northern Karakalpakistan; Rotar told fergana.ru that he did not link his detention and deportation to this specific issue, but rather to a general crackdown on media in Uzbekistan in the wake of violence in Andijon on 13 May.(RFE/RL)