Beijing, Sep 21 (DPA) China is failing to live up to promises made when it bid for the 2008 Olympics to improve its human rights record before the Summer Games, Amnesty International said Thursday.

While China has shown some improvement in reforming its death penalty system, its human rights record in other areas has worsened, the human rights group said as it assessed the overall rights situation in China as being poor.

"The serious human rights abuses that continue to be reported every day across the country fly in the face of the promises the Chinese government made when it was bidding for the Olympics," said Catherine Baber, Amnesty's deputy Asia-Pacific director.

Baber said China had renewed a crackdown on journalists and Internet users in the past year, "a fact that makes government commitments to 'complete media freedom' ring hollow".

Human rights activists have been harassed and jailed and thousands of people have been executed after unfair trials, Amnesty said in its report released less than two years before the Olympics.

Amnesty said it had sent its report to the International Olympic Committee.

"The current state of affairs runs counter to the most basic interpretation of the 'Olympic spirit' with the 'preservation of human dignity' at its heart," Baber said.

The rights group called on the committee to use its influence to speak out to the Chinese government against human rights abuses and lobby on behalf of those detained, specifically mentioning Ye Guozhu, who was evicted by force from his house to make way for a development for the Olympics.

When he sought to organise a demonstration with other evictees, he was sentenced to four years in prison, where he has been tortured, Amnesty charged.