Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)
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Question 140: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will report on recent meetings Irish authorities have had with Chinese counterparts on the ongoing abuses perpetrated against practitioners of Falun Gong. [18668/07]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Questions relating to the treatment of the Falun Gong — including specific cases — are raised regularly, within the context of the wider situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in China, in the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue, as well as in our own bilateral contacts with the Government of China. Discussions in this regard have also taken place at official level in Dublin and in Beijing.

The EU-China Human Rights Dialogue is the agreed formal framework through which the EU raises human rights issues and concerns with China. The Dialogue, the most recent round of which took place in Berlin on 15-16 May, has allowed the EU to engage with China on such issues as freedom of expression, the death penalty, the independence of the judiciary, freedom of religion and minority rights. The EU has used the Dialogue to press its case for Chinese ratification of such international instruments as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and, in that context, reform of the criminal justice system. The EU has also urged China to continue co-operation with, and to implement the recommendations of, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, including in particular the abolition of the "re-education through labour" system. The EU continues to use the Dialogue to raise significant individual human rights cases, including those relating to Falun Gong practitioners. Cases raised during the Dialogue meeting are followed up in subsequent contacts with the Chinese authorities.