Amnesty International Scotland said that the human rights references in a speech by Alex Salmond MSP, Scotland’s First Minister, in China yesterday were ‘an important first step’.

The First Minister was speaking on the subject of ‘Scotland and China: Wealth and Wellbeing of Nations’ on Tuesday to an audience at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He used the opportunity to highlight the common journey towards developing human rights he believed the international community was taking. He also noted the value of countries learning from each other in this respect.

Prior to the First Minister’s visit to China he had attended a briefing by Amnesty Scotland about the organisation’s human rights concerns in China.

Richard Hamer, Amnesty’s Programme Director for Scotland, said

“The First Minister has made an important first step by discussing human rights in his speech.

 “Scotland has an important role to play in promoting human rights internationally and it’s great to hear the First Minister acknowledge that profit and principle are not mutually exclusive.

“We hope he will follow up this message in his private meetings, and pick up the specific concerns Amnesty has raised with him, such as the case of Li Yan, a woman sentenced to death for killing her husband despite evidence that she had suffered sustained domestic violence.”