WASHINGTON -- Cuba continues ``to suppress all forms of political dissent'' and China's human rights record ``deteriorated sharply'' last year, according to a comprehensive U.S. State Department report card released Friday on the status of rights around the world.

The report on conditions in 194 countries also criticized arbitrary arrest and detention in Haiti, ``numerous, serious'' violations of rights by the police and military in Colombia, and the harassment and torture of the Kurdish minority in Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States.

Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh, in testimony to Congress on Friday, noted that the world's democracies have doubled to more than 100 in the last 10 years, but he warned that many of those countries are still developing fragile legal protections for their citizens.

Citing strife from Kosovo to Africa, he described ``the disturbing trend toward the widespread abuse of civilians trapped in conflict, particularly in countries facing internal insurgencies or civil war.''

Cubans jailed or beaten

``Traditionally repressive governments'' like Cuba and China have granted some economic freedom, Koh said, ``but without accompanying relaxation of controls over peaceful political activity.''

The report's 35-page section on Cuba described the cases of dissidents and protesters who were harassed, jailed and beaten by security forces or demonstrators organized by the government. Several ``credible reports of deaths due to excessive use of force'' were cited.

Last March, for example, police delivered the body of Wilfredo Martinez Perez, a member of a human rights group, to a funeral home in Havana a day after he was detained. His death apparently has not been investigated.

In June, the report says, authorities at Combinado de Guantanamo prison ``severely beat'' political prisoner Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, president of the Youth for Democracy movement. An inmate who witnessed the beating was ``aggressively harassed.''

In a section on freedom of religion, the report concluded that while the Cuban government ``eased the harsher aspects of its repression'' after Pope John Paul II's visit early in the year, the Roman Catholic Church's activities are still tightly controlled and monitored.

China cracks down

The report was particularly critical of China for moving backward at the end of 1998 ``with a crackdown against organized political dissent'' that included the detention of activists for trying to register a political party and ``harsh sentences'' for others in ``closed trials that flagrantly violated due process.''

The report was issued as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was leaving for China to discuss political and economic ties, and as the Senate voiced its criticism of rights abuses in China in a 99-0 vote.

In dealing with Cuba, 22 senators urged Albright this week to ``make every effort to address Castro's brutal human rights violations'' at the upcoming United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.

``We are confident that if you devote personal attention to this issue many of the governments will join the United States in opposing Castro's tyranny,'' wrote the senators, including Florida's Republican Connie Mack and Democrat Bob Graham.

Dissidents face trial

Cuba's human rights record will come under scrutiny again Monday, when a court is expected to try four top dissidents jailed for 19 months for publishing a manifesto that attacked the monopoly of power held by President Fidel Castro and the Communist Party.

Vladimiro Roca, Marta Beatriz Roque, Rene Gomez Manzano and Felix Bonne are leaders of the Internal Dissidence Working Group. Bonne's wife, Maria Dominguez, said she visited him in prison Friday and was told he had been offered freedom if he agreed to leave Cuba, but he refused.

Herald staff writer Juan O. Tamayo contributed to this report.