Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the document “untrue and slanderous,” and said that China cherished human rights and opposed torture. “To our regret, some biased committee members, in drafting the observations, chose to ignore the substantial materials provided by the Chinese Government,” he said in a statement posted Monday on the ministry’s Web site, adding that they “even fabricated some unverified information.” The ministry did not describe the material it had provided to the United Nations committee.

The report’s publication is another embarrassment for the Communist Party, which has been striving to demonstrate its commitment to human rights. Last month, the government was infuriated by the European Union’s decision to honor Hu Jia, one of the country’s best-known dissidents, who is serving a three-and-a-half year prison term for subversion; last week, China was angered by a United States Congressional report that criticized what it called China’s failure to fulfill a pledge to improve human rights leading up to the Olympic Games and during them.

“Illegal detentions and harassment of dissidents and petitioners followed the Chinese government and Communist Party’s instructions to officials to ensure a ‘harmonious’ and dissent-free Olympics,” the report said. “Individuals detained for circulating a ‘We Want Human Rights, Not Olympics’ petition are now serving sentences in prison and ‘re-education through labor’ centers.”

Although China’s Constitution includes provisions to protect human rights and China has ratified numerous international conventions banning torture, public security officials frequently use coercion to gain signed confessions. “I have yet to see a political case in which the person was not tortured or mistreated,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher based in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch. Even though torture is technically illegal under Chinese law, he added, there is no explicit prohibition against evidence obtained through coercion.

Human rights advocates say that the government’s crackdown on dissenters has not let up since the Games, when petitioners seeking permission to demonstrate in parks officially designated for protests were whisked away by the police.