Dialogues on Human Rights

Have you ever written to a government about human rights and received no reply?  If your experience has been anything like mine you very rarely get any reply and just have to guess whether your letter or e-mail has been taken seriously and had any effect.  The analogy of water dripping on a stone and slowly eroding it comes to mind.  (To be an Amnesty activist you need to be an optimist or at least to think that it is worth a try to put another drip!)

There are dialogues between the UK government and other governments on human rights; how effective they are is another question but at least there is some discussion.  I suspect that some governments are very good at stonewalling, using delaying tactics or pretending to take notice.  They may feel that it is a cheek for another country to interfere in what they view as internal matters but the concept of human rights implies that people have rights just because they are human, wherever they live.

I have found it difficult to find out details of the latest round of the Human Rights Dialogue between the UK and China but I think that it may have ended yesterday in London.  I have written to my MP to ask what cases of concern were raised and what progress was made.

I have now heard back from my MP and he has passed my questions to a minister at the Foreign Office.