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China

Volume 171: debated on Wednesday 25 April 1990

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To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether any recent representations have been made to the Government of the Republic of China regarding human rights violations since the events in June 1989; and if he will make a statement.

We and our EC partners have made our concerns very clear. On 2 and 21 February, the EC presidency in the UN Commission on Human Rights recorded the deep dismay of the international community at the repression of peaceful demonstrations in June 1989, and called upon the Chinese authorities to guarantee full respect for human rights throughout China, including Tibet. On 7 March, Britain and its EC partners co-sponsored a resolution in the Commission on Human Rights critical of human rights violations in China, which was narrowly defeated. We and our EC partners made representations in February to the Chinese Government about the arrests of Catholic priests.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his Department's latest estimate of the number of deaths in the incident in Tiananmen square, Peking.

It is not possible to provide a precise figure for the number of deaths in Peking last June. Amnesty International estimated that at least 1,000 civilians died.