Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help support independent journalism in the Xinjiang province of China.

Alongside severe restrictions on religion and culture in Xinjiang, freedom of expression and of the media is severely curtailed. We continue to urge the Chinese authorities to allow journalists to practice their profession without fear or arrest, harassment or reprisal, and to end extensive censorship and control over the media and wider freedom of expression. The UK has repeatedly taken a leading international role in holding China to account, including by leading statements at the UN Human Rights Council in June and the UN Third Committee in October. At the time, the UK was the only country to have led a joint statement at the UN.