(TibetanReview.net, Feb05’25) –A new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet (APPG Tibet) was launched in the 58th Parliament of the United Kingdom on Feb 4, following the general election held on Jul 4, 2024 last year, won by the Labour Party. Chris Law, Scottish National Party (SNP) MP, was elected as its Chair at the group’s inaugural meeting, which was held in the parliament’s Portcullis House, said the Office of Tibet, London, in a statement posted on the Tibet.net website of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), Feb 5.
The purpose of the group is “to put pressure on His Majesty’s Government to encourage negotiations between the Chinese Government and representatives of the Tibetan Government in exile, whilst recognising that Tibet is an occupied country which had independent ties with Britain.”
The new group currently has members that includes a Crossbench Peer (House of Lords member) and others belonging to the ruling Labour Party, Conservative Party, and Scottish National Party, representing cross-party support for Tibet.
Those who attended the inaugural meeting have been named, apart from Chris Law, MP for Dundee Central, as Lord (David) Alton of Liverpool, Crossbench Peer; Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for North Durham; Blair McDougall, Labour MP for East Renfrewshire; Jessica Morden, Labour MP for Newport East; Seamus Logan, SNP MP for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East; and Danny Kruger, Conservative MP for East Wiltshire. They expressed solidarity with Tibet and approved the election of the group’s Chair and other Officers as mandated by the new rules governing the establishment of APPGs.
Following Law’s inaugural statement, CTA’s recently appointed Representative at the Office of Tibet, Ms Tsering Yangkey, expressed hope and optimism that through the work of the APPGT, the issue of Tibet will gain higher political visibility.
She was followed by John Jones, Head of Campaigns, Policy and Research at the London-based campaign group Free Tibet, whose office also serves as the Secretariat for the APPG Tibet, provided a brief overview of the current situation in Tibet with special focus on a host of issues concerned with the ever-worsening environmental situation there.
Tibet Action Institute’s Dechen Pemba, who also spoke, has drawn attention to China’s mandatory colonial boarding school system in Tibet, where almost 80% of school-age children – amounting to nearly a million Tibetan children, some as young as four – are assimilated into the majority Han culture.
Law has drawn the MPs’ attention to the Early Day Motion titled “Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration to the UK and Northern Europe” (EDM No. 719) that he had tabled and encouraged them to sign it.
Others who attended the inaugural function were stated to include a representative of the International Tibet Network, the Chairperson and council members of the Tibetan Community in Britain, Jane Rasch of Tashi Lhunpo Trust UK, and Tibet supporter Giles Ford.
Law has announced that the next meeting of the APPGT will be held in early May 2025.