(Adds quotes, details, reaction) By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday called China's 2007 human rights record poor, but the host of this summer's Olympics escaped being listed among the world's worst offenders as it had been in previous years. In its annual report looking at human rights in more than 190 countries last year, the State Department said China tightened media and Internet curbs and increased controls on religious freedom in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang. "The government's human rights record remained poor, and controls were tightened in some areas," said the report, which China customarily dismisses and matches with a lengthy catalogue of what it says are U.S. rights shortcomings. Abuses in the world's most populous country and fastest-growing big economy included "extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor, including prison labor," the report said. "The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest and imprison journalists, writers, activists and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under law," said the 139-page section on China. China was not listed, however, among countries deemed the worst abusers of human rights, a list that included North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Sudan, Eritrea and Zimbabwe. China, usually on that list, was instead held up as the most prominent example of authoritarian states that are reforming their economies and societies "but have not undertaken democratic political reform and continue to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms." "COMPLETELY ACCURATE ASSESSMENT" Asked if the United States had pulled its punches because of the summer Olympics, senior State Department official Jonathan Farrar said the language in the report was "a completely accurate assessment." The press freedom watchdog group Reporters Without Borders called the U.S. decision a "major setback for human rights organizations" trying to press Beijing to make changes to accompany the Olympics. "The situation in China is not, of course, comparable to the one in North Korea or in Eritrea, but Washington's decision occurs at the worst possible time, just when the situation is worsening prior to the opening of the Olympic Games," said the Washington office of the Paris-based group. The State Department noted that China had last year "pursued some important criminal and judicial reforms," including reintroducing high court reviews of death penalties. Beijing also temporarily relaxed normally tight restrictions on foreign journalists for the Olympic year. But it cited the Foreign Correspondents Club of China as saying that amid overall improved conditions for foreign journalists, there were still more than 180 accounts of interference, including "plainclothes thugs intimidating or physically assaulting foreign journalists." The relaxed restrictions for the foreign press, which expire when the Olympics end in August, do not apply to Chinese journalists, who faced increased control and censorship in 2007, the report said. "The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest and imprison journalists, Internet writers, and bloggers," it said, citing NGO statistics showing 29 journalists and 51 "cyber-dissidents" jailed in China.(Editing by Philip Barbara)
A worker removes algae from an algae-filled lake in Guangzhou, Guangdong province March 7, 2008. China's Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to focus on fighting inflation, pollution and misgovernment as the nation ...
