WASHINGTON, March 11 (UPI) -- China, despite its still-dismal human rights record, has been removed from the U.S. worst offender list, the State Department said.
The department Tuesday released its annual Report on Human Rights, which reviewed the human rights situation in 190 countries during 2007.
Top offenders are North Korea, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan, reported Ya Libnan, a Lebanese media outlet.
"Countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remained the world's most systematic human rights violators," the report said.
China moved out of the Top 10, despite information that 'its human rights record remain poor," because it is listed in a section dealing with authoritarian countries undergoing economic reform "where the democratic political reform has not kept pace, and that is a completely accurate assessment," said Johnathan Farrar, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.
The report said Russia, under Vladimir Putin's presidency "continued to erode the government's accountability to its citizens."
