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Persecution of Christians (South-East Asia and China)

: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Taylor. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on securing the debate. The fact that he was third choice, which he admitted, does not in any way detract from the erudite and eloquent way in which he made his contribution. I also offer my best wishes to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) and hope that he makes a speedy recovery. I welcome the opportunity to set out the Government's position and to respond to the points of concern that were expressed by hon. Members in the debate. I share hon. Members' deep concern about the persecution of Christians in south-east Asia and China. I recognise that it is an issue that hon. Members and many people in the United Kingdom feel deeply about. I have been a Foreign Office Minister for about two months and from my mailbag I already know about the strong interest that hon. Members have in the subject. First I will set out some general observations. Promotion of human rights, including freedom of thought, conscience and religion, lies at the heart of our foreign policy. We condemn cases where individuals are persecuted because of their faith or belief, wherever it happens and whatever the religion of the individual or group concerned. Persecution is frequently counter-productive. Rather than crushing religious belief, it often has the opposite effect and inspires people. For example, the Chinese Christian Brother Yun, while suffering in prison in Burma in 2001, saw himself as a seed"““ready to spring to life and to produce a harvest that will feed many.””" It is, in my view, important not only to condemn persecution but to take action on a case-by-case basis. A large number of cases have been raised and I will refer to some of them. I will ask for further information on the others so that we can take them up. We raise our concerns in relevant international forums such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. We raise specific cases of religious persecution both bilaterally and with our EU partners. We take every opportunity to urge states to promote tolerance and mutual respect and to protect religious minorities against discrimination, intimidation and attacks. In general, we believe that dialogue with individual countries, wherever possible, is the best way to achieve our goals. Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials, both here and overseas, work closely with representatives of religious groups and non-governmental organisations, such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide. I pay tribute to them and acknowledge the work that they do in this field. I want to discuss how that works in practice and mention some of the specific cases that have been raised by hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud set out a number of alleged instances of persecutions of Christians in Vietnam. I share his concerns over any instances where individuals are persecuted or victimised for their faith. We are particularly concerned about the situation of the many unofficial churches in Vietnam, which can be the focus of abuse and mistreatment, in particular by local officials. I assure hon. Members that human rights, including freedom of religion, is firmly on the agenda in our relations with the Government of Vietnam. We have an open and frank dialogue with Vietnam over human rights, including freedom of religion, both bilaterally and with our EU partners. For example, on 22 March my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South (Mr. Alexander), raised the issue in this very House with the President of the Vietnamese National Assembly. As part of our regular EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue, on 7 June the EU, including the UK, pressed the Vietnamese Government on freedom of religion, restrictions on religious organisations and the situation of Protestant groups. We have urged Vietnam to guarantee in practice the right of all religious groups to practice their faith freely in a community. I believe that international pressure, including by the UK and the EU, is having some positive effect. Vietnam is now moving in the right direction on religious freedom. The US ambassador for international religious freedom, Ambassador Hanford, has recently recognised that and there is now positive engagement between the US and Vietnam on the issue of religious freedom. The Vietnamese authorities have recently eased restrictions on officially recognised Protestant groups and granted recognition to a number of new congregations. Relations between Protestant groups and the authorities have shown a modest improvement. For example, the new ordinance on belief and religion published last November, and the prime ministerial instruction on Protestantism in February, are steps forward. We hope that they will lead to the recognition of more Protestant groups, so that those groups can worship free from official harassment. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud that the implementation of those new regulations is a key issue. The EU list of prisoners and detainees of concern enables us to raise specific cases with the Vietnamese authorities. Seven of the 17 cases on the list are religious figures. So far in 2005, nine persons on the list have been released. We welcome that, but we will continue to press the Vietnamese Government for progress on the remaining cases on the EU list, as we did most recently on 7 June. Pastor Truong's case, which we are well aware of, was raised. We share the concerns that have been expressed in the debate over his treatment and we are particularly concerned at reports that he has been given drugs. At our suggestion, he has recently been added to the EU list of prisoners and detainees of concern. His case was raised on 7 June. We have also asked to meet him and are awaiting a response. My hon. Friend also raised the case of Miss Le Thi Hong Lien. We welcome the Vietnamese Government's decision on 26 April to free Miss Lien. We are aware of reports that since release she has faced further harassment, but is still free. We continue to monitor her case. We remain in touch with the Vietnamese authorities about Pastor Quang's case and those of his Mennonite colleagues, such as Pham Ngoc Thach. Our request for attendance at Pastor Quang's appeal in April was denied, but we will continue to monitor and raise his case. My hon. Friend argued that the EU should have been stronger on the case of Pastor Quang. I assure him that we have ensured that the case is very closely monitored by the EU, and the Vietnamese authorities are well aware of our concerns and interest in the case. We hope that the positive developments that we have seen in recent times will continue. I shall now turn to the case of Christians in China, and I address the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and the hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) and for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh). The UK Government are concerned about the freedom to practise religion in China and follow developments in this area carefully. We raise our concerns at every appropriate opportunity. As hon. Members will know, the Chinese state constitution permits freedom of religious belief and we acknowledge that the number of people practising religion in China, including Christianity, has increased greatly in recent years. Reports suggest that there are over 140 million official religious believers in China and that some 21 million people practise through official Protestant and Catholic churches. However, it is very clear to us that the Chinese Government and the Communist party want to strictly control religion in China. That is done through a number of mechanisms: state registration of all churches; state approval and vetting of all religious personnel; and strict controls on the publication of religious materials. In our view those and other sorts of controls seriously undermine, and in some cases effectively deny, the freedom to practise religious belief in China today. We receive regular reports about the harassment of unofficial Christian groups in China—many such cases have been mentioned today—that cause us grave concern. In September 2004, Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials raised concerns with Chinese Government officials about the mass arrests of unofficial Protestant church leaders in Xinjiang, Kaifeng, and Wuhan and about the detention of several members of the Baoding diocese clergy. Of course, sometimes people who are detained by the Chinese authorities are released quickly, but others are held for long periods and are sentenced to terms of re-education through labour or sent to prison. We have received credible reports of torture and abuse of such people in detention. Chinese officials tell us that people are never arrested for being religious believers and that a person must always have done something else to warrant punishment, but in our view there are people in prison in China for doing things that we consider to be the peaceful and legitimate expression of their religious beliefs. Chinese Catholics who, for example, recognise the authority of Rome rather than the Chinese Communist party should not, in our opinion, be harassed or imprisoned. We have raised, over the years, a number of religious cases of concern with the Chinese authorities, including most recently that of Pastor Zhang Rongliang. Foreign Minister Li and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke about this case during his visit to China in January. We continue to urge that Pastor Zhang has access to a legal adviser of his choice and, if he has to stand trial, that the trial should be open. The hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire and for Edinburgh, West referred to the new regulations on religion that China introduced in March 2005. The regulations reaffirm restrictions on religious practice and maintain the requirement for all religious groups to register. Penalties are set out for non-compliance. There is an appeals mechanism that may allow local authorities that take a particularly hard line on unofficial believers to be challenged. However, our assessment is that those regulations are aimed primarily at limiting and controlling the development of religion. We do not expect that the situation of unofficial religious believers will improve. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire raised a number of cases and I shall refer to some of them. We are aware of the case of Jilin province: indeed, Christian Solidarity Worldwide notified the Foreign Office of it. We are monitoring the situation and our embassy is making inquiries about the incident. The hon. Gentleman also raised the situation of Pastor Cai Zhuohua, who leads an official church and appeared in court on 7 July accused of illegally printing more than 200,000 bibles. He has been charged with illegal business practices, and the case has been adjourned without a verdict. Again, we are closely monitoring that case. We had 10 religious cases drawn from different backgrounds on the list of individual cases of concern that we handed to the Chinese Government as part of the UK-China human rights dialogue in June. The cases include that of Bishop James Su Zhimin, which was also raised by the hon. Gentleman. We monitor the situation in China carefully, and we raise incidents and cases with the Chinese authorities, through the human rights dialogue, through ministerial activity and through our support for EU activity. We are always willing to consider action when we have specific information. My officials have heard his speech and the particular cases that he raised. We shall require further information, and I am sure that they will approach either him or Christian Solidarity Worldwide about these matters.