22 November 2010

Prime Minister David Cameron let down his electorate when he failed to speak up for human rights during his recent trip to China. The week before his trip Free Tibet commissioned an ICM poll which revealed that three out of four British adults believe that protecting human rights in Tibet is at least as important as good trade relations with China.

As an excuse for his silence the Prime Minister referred to the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue as the appropriate forum for addressing Britain’s human rights concerns. However, the dialogue that Mr Cameron used to excuse his silence has completely failed and has become a tick-boxing exercise aimed at deflecting criticism of the government’s silence on human rights.

If the government’s only method of raising human rights with China is the dialogue, they must revise this defunct process in order to improve human rights for the Tibetan people.

Free Tibet has raised its concerns about the failure of the dialogue with the Foreign and Commonwealth office for several years. We understand that a review of the dialogue process is taking place in the next two weeks.

Please act urgently and write to you MP.

Please urge your MP to communicate your concerns to Jeremy Browne MP, the Minister responsible for the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue.

Find your MP:
- from the website: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/commons
- or by calling the House of Commons Information Office on 020 7219 4272.

You may use the sample letter below.

Dear [your MP’s name]

I am very disappointed with the Prime Minister’s silence on human rights and Tibet during his recent visit to China, despite the government manifesto that claims that it “will not hesitate to speak out against human rights abuses while pursuing our interests”.

Mr Cameron used the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue as the excuse for his silence. This dialogue process has failed to deliver to improve human rights. It does not take place regularly, lacks benchmarks and timeframes to monitor progress and the focus changes with each dialogue.

I understand a review of the process is now, therefore as a matter of urgency please communicate my concerns to Minister of State Jeremy Browne and urge him to ensure structural changes to the dialogue so that progress on human rights can be achieved.

Yours sincerely

 [your name]

Please send copies of any responses to Free Tibet to help us monitor the situation. 

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