Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to raise with the government of Burma concerns that many churches have been destroyed or damaged by the military in Kachin State since 2011.

The UK has not recently made specific representations to the Government of Burma about destruction and damage of churches in Kachin State. The Minister for Asia and the Pacific raised the UK's concerns about recent military conduct in Kachin and Shan states and about reports that Christians in Kachin were being persecuted in his meeting with the Burmese Ambassador on 11 July. The UK, working with EU partners and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, secured a UN Human Rights Council Resolution on 27 September that called for an immediate cessation of fighting and hostilities, of targeting civilians, and of all violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in northern Burma.