Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent representations he has made to his Russian counterpart on the continued detention of Oyub Titiev.

We remain concerned by the continued detention of Oyub Titiev, Head of the Chechnya division of Non-Governmental organisation Memorial. The UK most recently raised this issue in January 2019, when we joined other EU member states in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in calling for Mr Titiev’s immediate release. In November 2018, the UK was one of 16 participating States to invoke the OSCE Moscow Mechanism to investigate human rights abuses in Chechnya. We continue to prioritise the promotion and protection of human rights in Russia, and will continue to make our concerns clear in bilateral interactions at all levels, where appropriate.