Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what representations he has made to his Laos counterpart on potential legislative changes which threaten freedom of religion and belief in that country.

We raise human rights concerns on a regular basis with the Lao government both bilaterally and through multilateral fora. I visited Laos on 24 and 25 August and raised human rights as part of a UK-Laos Political Dialogue.

Regarding specific concerns over restrictions on the right to freedom of religion or belief, we raised these as part of Laos’ most recent Universal Periodic Review in 2015. This issue was also on the agenda at the annual EU-Laos Human Rights Dialogue in March 2018, where individual cases of concern were included in the discussion.

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