Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to support the rights of Christian minorities in Burma.

The British Government continues to express out concern at restrictions on freedom of religion and belief in Burma. The Minister for the Commonwealth and the United Nations raised the UK's concerns about persecution faced by Christian and other minorities in Burma in his speech to the Human Rights Council in February 2018. The UK, working with the EU and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, secured a UN Human Rights Council Resolution on 27 September 2018 that called for the amending or repealing of discriminatory provisions of the "protection of race and religion laws" in Burma covering religious conversion, interfaith marriage, monogamy and population control. The British Ambassador met the Burmese Minister for Religious Affairs on 9 August 2018, and underlined the importance of interfaith dialogue.