WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (AFP) - China stamped out active dissent and Burma's military dictatorship tightened its "severe repression" of human rights in 1996, the State Department said Thursday.

In its global report on human rights, the United States also slammed other Asian countries, citing Indonesia's "strongly authoritarian" regime for cracking down on dissidents and saying North Korea had not improved its status.

The annual survey of 194 countries and territories also said Hong Kong's civil liberties and political institutions are "threatened by restrictive measures taken by the Chinese government in anticipation of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty."

It slapped South Korea for backsliding on civil liberties, mistreating political prisoners, brutalizing student demonstrators and discriminating against women and minorities.

Pakistan and Afghanistan were also criticized.

And it said Japan generally respects human rights, but that there are reports of "harsh treatment" of some suspects by authorities and varying degrees of societal discrimination against women and minorities.

According to the State Department's report, China continued to commit widespread human rights abuses "stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the continuing absence of laws protecting basic freedoms."

Although China's constitution and laws protect basic freedoms, "they are often ignored in practice," it said, citing the killing and torture of prisoners, forced confessions, and arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention.

Serious human rights abuses persist in minority areas, including Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, it added.

On Burma, the report decried the regime's tight-fisted control of citizens through a "pervasive security apparatus led by military intelligence."

The ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) "has given no sign of willingness to cede its hold on absolute power," said the report.

Instead, SLORC has intensified restrictions on basic rights to free speech, press, assembly and association, it said.

Although the authorities have recognized the chief opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) as a legal entity, they continue to harass NLD members, including leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, it said.

It said North Korea recorded no improvement in the respect for human rights of its citizens last year.

"The state leadership perceives most international norms of human rights, especially individual rights, as illegitimate and alien social artifacts subversive to the goals of the state and party," the report said.

Calling Pyongyang's penal code "draconian," the report noted that laws stipulate capital punishment and confiscation of assets for all "crimes against the revolution," such as "ideological divergence" and "opposing socialism."

Citing "credible reports," the State Department document said many prisoners are "ill-treated and many have died from torture, disease, starvation or exposure."

In Indonesia, the report said there were "encouraging signs along with substantial grounds for continuing concern."

It found that the fruits of Indonesia's booming econony are widely dispersed but that "pervasive corruption remains a problem."

And while there was a decline in arbitrary executions and a decrease in serious incidents in East Timor, "killings of unarmed civilians, disappearances, and torture and mistreatment of detaines by security forces continued," the report said.

The report noted that in December South Korea extended a law allowing investigations in terrorism and international crime organizations to authorizing probes into domestic organizations.

This revision of a 1993 law restricting interference in domestic politics resulted in "infringements of suspects' rights," the report said.

In Japan the report said there were "credible reports of harsh treatment of some suspects in custody" despite a generally favorable human rights situation.

It said lawyers and human rights groups have asserted that "police sometimes use physical violence, including kicking and beating, as well as psychological intimidation ... to obtain confessions."

A large portion of the report on Japan was devoted to discrimination in various forms against women, the indigenous Ainu, and other minorities including the Burakumin a group historically treated as outcasts.

The situation in Pakistan remained poor last year as extrajudicial killings increased and violence against women remained widespread, the report said.

The absence of rule of law and nonexistent civil institutions led to a continuation of political killings and other serious human rights abuses in Afghanistan, the report said.

It maintained while all warring factions committed abuses, the situation for women was "significantly worse" in urban areas controlled by the Islamic Taliban militia.