Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether his Department is taking steps to monitor reports of state-sponsored violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

​The British Government is monitoring the human rights situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) through discussions with NGOs, with local residents and leaders, as well as through monitoring reports by credible international development and human rights organisations. Officials in London met the MP for Rangmati Hill District, Ushatan Talukder, last year to discuss the situation on the ground. British High Commission officials visited the CHT to see conditions first-hand in April, and subsequently briefed the APPG on Human Rights regarding the situation there.

At the 30th Session of the Human Rights Universal Periodic Review on 21 May, the Minister responsible for Human Rights, Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, noted the pressures on freedom of expression and assembly in the CHT in his closing statement, and called on the Government of Bangladesh to address these issues. I condemn all violence in the CHT and I encourage the Government of Bangladesh to investigate allegations of abuses and hold perpetrators to account.