Human rights group Amnesty International condemned Romania on Thursday for inhuman conditions in its overcrowded psychiatric institutions, saying children and agitated patients are often tied to their beds. Amnesty said the living conditions and treatment of patients in mental hospitals in the Balkan country, which hopes to join the European Union in 2007, “continued to breach international human rights standards.”

Last December, the European Parliament urged Romania to ensure that psychiatric hospitals had adequate resources for the treatment and care of patients, and to focus attention on children and the young who needed to be protected from abuse.

Amnesty’s report said a visit by a local human rights organisation to one southeastern psychiatric hospital in June found 140 adults and 50 children were living in conditions “amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment.”

“The ward for adults was overcrowded, with some patients having to share beds,” the report said. “All residents had very short hair, were poorly dressed and only a few had underwear.”

The report said many of the children had their arms and legs tied to the sides of their cots, and most bedridden children had skin rashes because they were not properly cared for. Some children stood barefoot on the wet floor.

“The authorities’ failure to provide adequate care and to put in place legal safeguards to protect residents from abuse exposed patients and residents to a considerable risk of physical and mental abuse,” the report added.

It said two patients in mental hospitals died last year as a result of neglect and abuse.

The Social Democrats, who ruled Romania before they lost elections last November to a centrist coalition, won praise abroad for spurring economic growth in the country of 22 million but were criticised for failing to protect human rights.