UK Launches Human Rights Report

David Miliband launched 2009 report on human rights in central London.

He said the Foreign Office report ensured that “the most oppressive governments who refuse to be held to account by their own people, they are at least held to account by the international community.”

The report highlighted three issues: the “increasing harassment of defence lawyers; the treatment of detainees in relation to ethnic unrest… and the detention of human rights defenders and political dissidents.”

“A worrying number of people were imprisoned in 2009 for attempting to exercise their right to freedom of expression,” it said. “Officials from the British Embassy in Beijing made repeated efforts to attend the trials of individuals in priority cases but were denied access. “Increasingly, the authorities are using criminal charges to shut down the activities of human rights defenders.”

Miliband said London would continue to push for sanctions against “the most oppressive states such as Burma and Zimbabwe”.

The 192-page report highlighted 22 “countries of concern”: Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Colombia, Cuba, North Korea, the DR Congo, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The report said it had been a “particularly grim year” in Iran while there were “signs of considerable progress” in Iraq.