Representatives of an international human rights organization Wednesday accused the authorities in two ex-Soviet republics, war-torn Georgia and Tajikistan, of subjecting their citizens to torture and ethnic discrimination.


The representatives' greatest concern in Georgia was the use of forced confession, when "torture is used during an investigation," Erica Dailey, director of the Moscow bureau of the Human Rights Watch, formerly Helsinki Watch, told a press conference.


Dailey, who recently spent two weeks in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, said she and a fellow activist, Alexander Petrov, saw "results of gross torture" on their visits to defendants.


Dailey said local officials have acknowledged that torture was used in the case of Zaza Tsiklauri, one of 19 men being tried on charges of terrorism and arms smuggling.


On several occasions Tsiklauri, who has been under investigation since last October, had been hung up by his feet and beaten up. Guards had also poured boiling water over him.


The situation in Georgia, at war with its breakaway region of Abkhazia, is exacerbated by a ruined economy, a lack of faith in the government and consequent hypersensitivity on the part of the government to public dissatisfaction and dissent, Dailey said.


In Tajikistan in Central Asia, government forces are persecuting ethnic Uzbeks in the Pyanj region, where an anti-government rebellion started two years ago, said Fatimeh Ziai, the organization's representative in the country.


The Tajik police and soldiers single out Uzbeks' houses to conduct unwarranted searches for weapons and sometimes detain the residents and beat them up in detention, Ziai said.