Helen Goodman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Goodman on 2016-09-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with officials of the Egyptian government on the killings in Rabaa in June 2013.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The UK Government was deeply concerned by the clearance of the sit-ins on 14 August 2013, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protestors and a number of police officers. We raised our concerns with the Egyptian Government at the highest levels, as well as in the EU Foreign Affairs Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council. The then Foreign Secretary, Lord Hague of Richmond, issued a statement at the time of the violence, in which he condemned the use of force in clearing protests in Egypt and called on the security forces to act with restraint. I personally raised this issue with the Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on 9 September 2015.