MOSCOW - Three years after gunning down unarmed protesters in the city of Andijan, Uzbek authorities are still persecuting people they believe are linked to the unrest, an international rights group says in a report released Monday.

Human Rights Watch says returning refugees are beaten and tortured, while their children are ostracized by teachers as the offspring of enemies of the state.

One refugee's father was given a stark warning: Bring your son's family back to Uzbekistan or "you will simply disappear."

The pressure is part of an effort by President Islam Karimov's government "to rewrite history and silence all within the country who might question its version of what happened in Andijan," Human Rights Watch says in the report.

Rights groups and witnesses say that on May 13, 2005, Uzbek government forces opened fire and killed more than 700 people, mostly unarmed protesters in the eastern city. Thousands had been demonstrating after an armed uprising sparked by anger over the trial of local businessmen on Islamic extremism charges.

The Uzbek government says the death toll was 187, however, and attributes all civilian deaths to gunmen.

Karimov's government has rejected Western calls for an international investigation and instead cracked down on dissent. More than 250 people were convicted in what rights groups described as show trials, including rights advocates and opposition activists sentenced to long prison terms for crimes ranging from extortion to embezzlement. Hundreds of people fled to neighboring Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere.

Three years after the Andijan incident, Human Rights Watch says the crackdown continues.

The New York-based organization urged the international community to hold the authoritarian government accountable. It suggested the United States has been too soft on the Uzbek leadership, and criticized the European Union for suspending sanctions imposed after the massacre.

"Tashkent's international partners ... should make ending the ongoing persecution in Andijan a core objective of their engagement with Tashkent," the organization's regional director, Holly Cartner, said in a statement.

The report says the Uzbek government "continues vigorously to seek out and persecute anyone it deems to have a connection to or information about the Andijan events."

Relatives of those who fled and refugees who later returned "have been subject to interrogations, constant surveillance, ostracism and in at least one case an overt threat to life," says the 44-page report, based on interviews in July 2007 and March 2008 with Uzbek refugees, mostly in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

One man told Human Rights Watch that police had interrogated him harshly and pressured him to persuade his older son, who fled after the massacre, to return to Uzbekistan. The man said he had unsuccessfully appealed for the release of his younger son, who was convicted of involvement in the unrest. After that, a plainclothes officer told him he had three days to bring his older son's family back. He recalled telling the officer he did not fear prison, and said the officer replied: "Who will send you to prison? ... You will simply disappear."

The report tells of another man who said he returned to Uzbekistan in mid-2005 after being told he would not face repercussions, but was arrested a year later and tortured by investigators. He said the investigators wanted him to confess to carrying a gun during the Andijan unrest and provide information about others who fled, according to the report.

"They beat me with clubs in the kidney area and forced me to stand straight and keep my hands behind my head during these beatings," the man is quoted as saying. "They beat me every other day. They also put a gas mask on me and cut off the air, and beat me on my feet with a wooden stick." Eventually, he said, "I was ready to confess that I was in the tank, that I fired a gun, or that I am (Osama) bin Laden's best friend."

Most of the refugees were men, leaving behind wives and children who now face harassment and persecution, interrogation and the denial of social services, the report says.

The report quotes one woman as saying she fled the country with her children after teachers and some classmates called them "children of an enemy of the state."

Hundreds who fled to Kyrgyzstan were resettled in Western nations, but several dozen returned to Uzbekistan from the United States. Human Rights Watch says their motives were not entirely clear, but that its interviews show some had hoped to stop the pressure on their families.