Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth on 2014-06-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking in relation to suppression of the marking of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations by the government of China.

Baroness Warsi

We are concerned at reports of detentions in relation to the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square and raised our concerns about this with the Chinese authorities during the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue on 20 May. The Minister of State, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), raised this issue with the Chinese authorities on 19 May and made a statement on this issue on 21 May. We also fully support the EU statement of 28 May calling for the release of all those imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their views. We were pleased to see that on 5 June, the Chinese authorities released a number of those arrested after attending an event to commemorate the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989.