State Department Human Rights Report Released WASHINGTON - After an "especially tumultuous and momentous year" for human rights, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Thursday, the challenge in many Arab countries has shifted from breaking the repressive back of entrenched dictatorships to protecting new freedom during the often chaotic and sometimes violent transitions that follow. Mrs. Clinton made the remarks as she released the State Department's report on global human rights for 2011, cataloging rights abuses in 194 countries. She cited Egypt as an example, noting that the violence of last year had given way to a peaceful presidential election on Wednesday and Thursday. The demands of reformers, she said, were "making a difference as Egyptians are going to the polls to determine for the first time in their history who their leaders will be." Some chronic abusers of human rights remained at the bottom of the department's list: Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Belarus and China. The report included tough words about Chinese rights practices, saying that conditions there had deteriorated. In 2008, the report dropped China from its list of the worst abusers. But the new report cites "repression and coercion" of rights advocates, tight restrictions on political dissidents, curbs on journalists and on Internet access, and "severe cultural and religious repression" of ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans. The recent diplomatic incident involving the blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng occurred after the time frame covered in the report. Still, Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state, said that it demonstrated how the United States could criticize foreign nations for human rights shortcomings even while cooperating with them on economic or security issues. The report also provided a grim look at conditions in Iran, where it said the government had carried out hundreds of executions without due process; arrested and tortured protesters and detained more journalists than nearly any country in the world. In one striking change from reports of previous years, State Department officials singled out Myanmar, formerly called Burma, as an exemplar of positive change, noting that hundreds of political prisoners had been freed as the country's leaders began "the long and difficult process of political reform and reconciliation." Colombia and Zambia also made progress, the report said. The annual report mandated by Congress, runs to several hundred pages and is closely studied by rights groups and some foreign governments. This time, the compilers faced the task of assessing the revolutionary ferment that swept the Middle East in 2011. Tunisia was cited positively, with restrictions lifted on freedoms of the press, assembly and association after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was driven from office by protests. But the road has been rockier in other Middle Eastern and North African countries, the report said. "Change in any society that's been stuck is going to be a process," Mr. Posner said. It's not a linear process.