U.S. Condemns Beijing Over Rights : China: The State Department report criticizes last June’s massacre. The Soviet Union draws praise.

The United States on Wednesday issued its toughest official condemnation of China’s human rights policies since the era of Mao Tse-tung.

In its annual worldwide human rights report to Congress, the State Department said the human rights climate inside the world’s most populous country “deteriorated dramatically in 1989.”

In looking at other countries, the report expressed “deep concern” about the situation in Israel’s occupied territories but also pointed to “remarkable steps” toward freedom in the Soviet Union and said changes in Eastern Europe could make 1989 a “watershed year” for progress in human rights.

The stinging comments on China dismissed that nation’s defense of the “Beijing massacre” last June, saying the Chinese regime’s explanation that troops opened fire on crowds in order to put down a rebellion was “a massive disinformation campaign.”

The report proceeded to detail a pervasive system of abuses in China last year, including unannounced executions, the unexplained disappearances of students and intellectuals, degrading prison conditions, forced confessions, numerous arrests of political prisoners and repression of religion.

“The (Chinese) government neither tolerates dissent nor accepts challenges to its authority,” the State Department concluded. “The authorities denounce as ‘counterrevolutionary’ proposals to limit the power of the (Communist) Party or to alter the nation’s ideology. The government’s handling of the spring demonstrations, the killing of its citizens, its subsequent crackdown on dissent and its massive disinformation campaign aimed at rewriting history demonstrate the senior leadership’s determination to retain power.”

Although the commentary on China had been expected for months and does not go much beyond what many private human rights groups and news organizations have already said, its release under the imprimatur of the U.S. government is sure to produce an outraged response from China.

Early this month, in an apparent effort to persuade the Bush Administration to withhold or water down its criticisms, China’s Foreign Ministry warned that a critical report “will certainly do further harm to Sino-U.S. relations.”

The State Department report also said that the human rights situation in Israel’s occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip “remains a source of deep concern to the United States. Overall, there were more Palestinian deaths in 1989 than in 1988.” Israeli security forces, the report said, have employed widespread arrests, detention, raids on homes and deportation in an effort to put down the Palestinian intifada , or uprising.

In Israel, Brig. Gen. Amnon Strashnov, Israel’s chief military prosecutor, said that some details of the U.S. report were wrong but that he accepted many of the charges by Israel’s closest ally.

“In the end, the report presents facts, most of which I accept as correct, and they are not new for us,” he told army radio.

In striking contrast to its language on China, the State Department praised the “remarkable steps taken by the Soviet Union in the direction of an open society.” And the 1,641-page report hailed the “revolutionary changes” in Eastern Europe, asserting that because of them, 1989 could well go down as a historic year for worldwide human rights.

The State Department was also cautiously optimistic about signs of progress in Chile and South Africa, two nations that have been criticized repeatedly in past reports.

Along with China, the countries castigated for totalitarian methods of government included North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. The State Department said Iran, Iraq and Syria carry out “severe repression” within their borders, and it said the human rights situation in Myanmar (Burma), already “dismal,” became even worse last year.

Each year, the descriptions of the human rights situation inside individual countries are first drafted by American embassy officials overseas, and are then often rewritten by area specialists and human rights experts at the State Department.

Sometimes, U.S. officials disagree over the language that will be used. For example, one source said that in the section on China in this year’s report, there was some debate over what estimate should be used for the number of people killed in Beijing on June 3-4. The final report says vaguely that “at least several hundred, and possibly thousands,” of Chinese were shot to death.

But there does not appear to be any way that the United States could have completely ignored or minimized the situation in China last year, as the Chinese Foreign Ministry seemed to be requesting. The State Department is required by law to give a straightforward report on what it believes human rights conditions are inside each country.

So far as is known, senior Bush Administration officials made no effort to alter the report’s harsh condemnation of Chinese policy, despite the Administration’s policy of seeking a reconciliation with China’s leadership.

In December, President Bush touched off a furor by sending National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing. Afterward, U.S. officials said one reason for the timing of that trip was to give Chinese leaders a chance to moderate their policies before early this year, when a series of congressional votes on China and the issuance of the annual human rights report would impose further strains on U.S.-China relations.

However, Democratic leaders immediately seized upon the report as new ammunition for their continuing attacks on Bush’s overtures to the regime of Deng Xiaoping.

The report is “a devastating indictment of the policies of the Bush Administration toward China,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said. “ . . . It does shock the conscience of Americans. Unfortunately, it has not shocked the conscience of the executive branch of the American government.”