Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the recent treatment of road safety protesters by the Bangladeshi authorities in Dhaka.

I was deeply concerned by the violence we saw in Dhaka in response to protests on road-safety this summer. In a statement on 7 August, the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Alison Blake, together with other EU Heads of Mission, called on the Government of Bangladesh to investigate incidents of unlawful or disproportionate violence against road safety protestors and journalists and hold the perpetrators to account. Subsequently, Joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development Minister Alistair Burt expressed our concern regarding the response to the road safety protests with the Government of Bangladesh, during his visit to Bangladesh from 28-31 August.

Bangladesh remains a Human Rights Priority Country for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We raised freedom of expression as a key concern in Bangladesh during the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review and we continue to encourage the Government of Bangladesh to work with Bangladeshi Civil Society to address their concerns regarding freedom of expression.