Contact is taking a holiday!

Crowds protest against the state visit by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Corbis

Patrick Wintour Political editor

Thursday 22 October 2015  http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/22/minister-ordered-address-chinese-human-rights-issue-commons

Cross-party concern that David Cameron has downgraded human rights in his efforts to win business contracts with China was expressed at Westminster on Thursday when the Speaker ordered a Foreign Office minister to respond to concerns about the imprisonment of the human-rights lawyer Zhang Kai.

MPs from all sides demanded to know whether the prime minister had raised specific human rights issues during the glittering state visit of China’s president, Xi Jinping.

In a sign of the concern on Conservative benches, it was Fiona Bruce, a Tory MP and the chairwoman of the party’s human-rights commission, who tabled an urgent question warning ministers not to be silent on human rights in China, which brought the Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire to the house.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, also took the trouble to sit on the Labour benches to listen to the exchanges in a further public display of his concern.

The Speaker’s decision to air the issue of human rights in the Commons will have been uncomfortable for the government.

Bruce raised the specific issue of Zhang, who is currently under arrest and facing the possibility of the death penalty for inciting unlawful assembly. She pointed out that Zhang has been advising churches how to protect themselves from destruction. As many as 100 churches have been destroyed in the past two years, something Bruce described as “a gross violation of religious freedom”.

She said dialogue on human rights and respect for the rule of law had to be put at the centre of Britain’s relationship with China, saying it was widely recognised that individual freedom led to better business outcomes.

Swire said the state visit was successful but still under way, pointing out that the Chinese president at his Downing Street press conference had said “all countries need to continuously improve and strengthen their human-rights record to meet the needs of the time and people”.

Swire was reluctant to refer to specific human rights cases, or how they had been raised on the visit, but said the issues were raised in the UK-China annual human rights dialogue in April. He reported that “as many as 200 human rights lawyers in China have been questioned or detained since 9 July and the spaces in which they operate are seriously constrained”.

Although he rejected specifically calling for Zhang to be released in line with a statement from the US secretary of state, John Kerry, he pointed out that Britain had supported an EU statement on 15 July condemning the detentions.

Tim Loughton, a former Conservative minister, asked: “Why, in the UK, where democracy is built on the principle of free speech, were protesters in the Mall this week, exercising their right to draw attention to human rights abuses in Tibet, corralled behind barricades at the back while Chinese state-sponsored cheerleaders were given ‘Love China’ T-shirts from Chinese diplomatic bags and given prime position at the front?”

Sir Edward Leigh, a senior Conservative backbencher, said some of the Chinese persecution of Catholics was reminiscent of persecution in Britain in the 16thcentury.

“What we want as the House of Commons is not vague assurances on this. What we want to know, while we respect the world’s growing superpower and want to trade with them, [is that] we are absolutely fearless in these matters … and during this visit will raise [them] with the Chinese president.”

For Labour, Catherine West, a shadow Foreign Office minister, said: “In many parts of the world, including China, religious belief defines who they are.” She said many human-rights lawyers, including Zhang, were being detained in breach of the Chinese constitution.

David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall, asked whether ministers really had to grovel to every dictatorship that treats human rights with the same contempt as China.