UK MP Receives Letter from Foreign Office about Falun Gong

7th February 2002
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
LONDON SW1A 2AH

(From the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State)
Gareth Thomas Esq MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Gareth

Thank you for your letter of 30 January, enclosing correspondence from your constituent, Mr John Dee of the Association of European People Supporting the Freedom of Belief of Falun Gong Practitioners in China.

The government has not taken a position on the nature of the Falun Gong organisation. But we have serious concerns about human rights abuses against individual practitioners. We have made clear to the Chinese that, as the Foreign Affairs Committee pointed out in its report on China in November 2000, their actions contravene the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which China has signed, though not ratified).

The treatment of Falun Gong adherents features prominently in our exchanges on human rights with the Chinese. During the seventh round of the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue, held in London on 19-21 November 2001, we raised our concern that action against terrorism should not be used as a pretext to curb the rights of ethnic minorities or to mistreat people who expressed their views peacefully.

We also expressed in particular our concern that leading figures in the Falun Gong movement were handed out unusually harsh prison sentences, and that there reports of the use of torture despite clear Chinese Government prohibitions.

I personally raised the treatment of Falun Gong adherents with the senior Chinese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Li Zhaoxing, during a meeting I had with him on 30th October last year.

We will continue to press them on this issue.

Yours sincerely

Denis MacShane

(Mr MacShane then added a hand-written note as follows…)

I continue to raise this issue with the Chinese and I am grateful that you wrote in support of Mr Dee’s legitimate concerns.