Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking with his EU counterparts to enable (a) EU diplomats and (b) journalists to enter Tibet.

We support access to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) for EU diplomats and a number have recently been granted access. The Ambassador of Denmark was the most recent high-level visitor in April and other senior EU diplomats, including from the UK, are planning a joint visit in 2016. For its part, the UK has a standing request to visit but, as we note in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy, China did not accept our requests in 2015. We also support access to the TAR for journalists. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China reports that approximately three-quarters of journalists had their application to visit Tibet denied in 2015. We consistently raise the issue of access to the TAR and media freedom in the annual UK-China human rights dialogue.