Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the persecution of Christians in North Korea.

We are deeply concerned by reports of widespread and systematic state sanctioned human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), particularly by the reports of the persecution of Christians detailed by the UN Commission of Inquiry and elsewhere. We have called on the DPRK to respect the provision in its constitution guaranteeing “freedom of belief in religion”. Our belief is that if the DPRK will not hold human rights violators to account, the international community must be ready to do so. We worked with likeminded partners to ensure the resolutions adopted at the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly included strong language to make clear there can be no impunity for human rights violations and to call for appropriate action to ensure accountability.