China: Religious Freedom

(asked on 12th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent representations his Department has to the Chinese authorities on the detention of (a) Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, (b) Falun Gong practitioners, (c) Christian leaders, (d) other members of religious minorities and (e) people who defend the right to freedom of religion or belief in that country.


Answered by
 Portrait
Mark Field
This question was answered on 19th March 2018

​We remain concerned about restrictions on freedom of religion or belief in China. We issued an item IV statement at the 37th UN Human Rights Council on 14 March which reiterated our concerns about the situation in China. We also supported the EU item IV statement at the same session, which called on China to respect freedom of religion.

We raised our concerns about these issues directly with the Chinese authorities at the UK/China Human Rights Dialogue which took place in Beijing on 27 June 2017.

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