US adds Syria to list of top rights abusers

Drops China, enlists Sudan

WASHINGTON (Agencies)

The U.S. dropped China from its list of the world's worst human rights violators, but added Syria, Uzbekistan and Sudan to the alleged offenders in an annual report released Tuesday.

The State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report showed China, which has raised hopes it will improve human rights by hosting the 2008 Olympics, had parted company with countries like North Korea, Myanmar and Iran.

In its report, the State Department listed 10 "countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators."

No reason was given for removing China -- which has been a key partner in talks with Washington to denuclearize North Korea -- from the list but the new report said China's "overall human rights record remained poor" in 2007.

The report still said that China tightened media and Internet curbs and increased controls on religious freedom in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang in 2007, the U.S. State Department report said.

The 2007 top 10 offenders included North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan.

Beijing had figured in the top 10 in the 2006 and 2005 reports.

Human rights had improved however in four countries since 2006: Mauritania, Ghana, Morocco and Haiti.

Little or no progress had been made in Nepal, Georgia, Kyrghyzstan, Iraq, Afghanistan or Russia, while the situation had deteriorated in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the report added.

Sudan's human rights record remained "horrific" last year, with humanitarian workers among targets of increased violence in the 5-year-old war in the country's Darfur region, the report said.

"Sudan's human rights record remained horrific, with continued reports of extrajudicial killings, torture, beatings, and rape by government security forces and their proxy militia in Darfur," the document read.