British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis (1) MP will later this week make the first visit to Tibet by a member of the British government since Tibetans defiantly demonstrated their rejection of Chinese rule in protests that swept across the Tibetan Plateau in Spring 2008.

Mr Lewis’s visit to Tibet will represent a crucial stage of the Minister’s visit to China which begins on September 6: the human rights situation inside Tibet has continued to deteriorate drastically (2) since Spring 2008 with more than one thousand detained Tibetans still unaccounted for by the Chinese authorities(3).

Despite China’s increasingly hardline response to even the mildest forms of dissent by Tibetans over the past year, the British government has failed to adapt its policy to reflect the recent deterioration of the situation inside Tibet. Instead it has continued to follow a policy of so-called constructive engagement with China which has failed to deliver any discernible progress in the field of human rights. British policy appears to prioritise China’s emergence as a global political and economic force over addressing its professed human rights concerns. The consequent failure to prioritise human rights in Tibet and China is evidenced by the lack of any strong public statement by the British government on the deterioration of human rights in Tibet since March 2008 (4).

Britain’s weakening position on human rights and Tibet was put into sharp focus only months after some of the worst human rights abuses committed by the Chinese authorities in Tibet in decades. In October 2008, instead of making a strong public statement on the worsening situation inside Tibet, the British government offered a major concession to China by suddenly reversing its position of 94 years that China merely enjoyed a “special position” in Tibet. In a statement British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, declared that Britain now regarded Tibet as “a part of the People’s Republic of China”(5).The move was made without any form of parliamentary oversight and was strongly condemned by Free Tibet at the time for surrendering an important point of leverage over the Chinese government. The British government has also failed to clarify whether any assurances on human rights and Tibet were sought from, or have been subsequently given by, China in return for Britain’s concession on the status of Tibet.

Free Tibet therefore hopes that Ivan Lewis will use the opportunity of his visit to break the British government’s silence on human rights in Tibet and publicly raise the concerns of the British governments with his Chinese counterparts. One of the most pressing concerns is China’s persistent refusal to account for more than one thousand Tibetans detained in the Spring of 2008. Free Tibet has also encouraged the Minister to specifically raise with his Chinese counterparts:

• concerns regarding the widespread and routine use of torture(6) by the Chinese authorities as a weapon designed to instil a climate of fear and self-censorship in Tibet;

• concerns regarding the widespread failure by the Chinese authorities to allow Tibetan detainees the fundamental rights and legal safeguards guaranteed under Chinese law.

Director of Free Tibet, Stephanie Brigden, said:

Ivan Lewis has to make a clear and public statement while in Tibet that China’s appalling and ongoing human rights abuses inside Tibet are unacceptable and must stop. It is inconceivable that a British minister visiting Tibet for the first time since last year’s protest and violent crackdown would fail to make such a statement. Failure to make a public statement would be seen as offering a tacit endorsement of China’s policy in Tibet, would hand China a wholly undeserved propaganda victory and would only embolden the Chinese authorities to carry on perpetrating further atrocities.”