Open Letter: Prohibited weapons at the Chinese Embassy

Open letter to the Prime Minister

Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA

cc. Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Rt Hon Shabana Mahmood MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department

Re: Prohibited weapons at the Chinese Embassy – a test of this Government’s commitments on transnational repression

Dear Prime Minister,

On 3 July, security personnel of the Chinese Embassy in London were filmed on Portland Place gesturing through the mission’s doors at people standing on the public highway with what appeared to be sparking electroshock weapons. The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that it is investigating. The people on the street were British citizens holding a candlelit vigil.

Weapons of that kind are prohibited under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968. If the devices shown in the footage were functioning electroshock weapons, their presence raises a question that no police investigation can answer: how prohibited weapons came to be held on premises that British police cannot enter without consent, and what assurance the public has that nothing else prohibited under UK law is held there. Every route by which such items could have arrived — the diplomatic bag, exempted baggage, or acquisition within the United Kingdom — involves unlawful conduct. Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations requires those enjoying diplomatic privileges to respect the laws of the receiving state.

You took office after this incident, but you inherit the question it raises, and you inherit a pattern alongside it. In October 2022, a protester was dragged into the grounds of the Chinese Consulate in Manchester and assaulted. Six officials left the country before they could be questioned. No charge was ever brought. Diaspora communities in Britain drew the conclusion that was available to them, and have acted on it since: that this country will express concern, and then move on.

The vigil on 3 July had been called to mourn Lobga Rangzen, a Tibetan who died the previous day outside the United Nations headquarters in New York. It was attended by Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kongers together. That is the constituency now watching how your Government answers — people who came to Britain for its protection and were confronted, on a London street, by personnel of the state they left.

We therefore ask you to:

1. Direct that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office seek a waiver of immunity from the Chinese Embassy in respect of any accredited personnel involved, so that the Metropolitan Police investigation may proceed unobstructed.
2. Ensure a statement is made to the House setting out the Government’s assessment of how weapons prohibited under UK law came to be present at a diplomatic mission in London; what assurances have been sought that any such items have been surrendered to UK authorities or their removal independently verified; and whether the safeguards governing diplomatic consignments remain adequate.
3. Declare Article 63 of China’s new law on ‘Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress’ void in the UK. This Article claims jurisdiction over people outside China accused of “undermining ethnic unity” — a term Beijing alone defines, and one that covers peaceful advocacy by Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, Uyghurs, and other groups in Britain at risk from CCP-led transnational repression. The Prime Minister should say plainly that it has no effect in UK law and that acting on it here is a criminal offence, not a diplomatic irritant.
4. Reach and announce a decision specifying China under the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. Both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights have called for this. The decision has been outstanding long enough that the delay has itself become a signal, and it is read as one by the communities most affected. Your Government could end it this month.
5. Give an undertaking that no decision is taken on the proposed embassy at Royal Mint Court until the Government has satisfied itself, and Parliament, that conditions attached to any permission can in practice be enforced on premises that are inviolable. The events of 3 July bear directly on that question.

We ask nothing that cuts across the operational independence of the Metropolitan Police, and nothing here presumes the outcome of its investigation. The questions we raise are ones that only the Government can answer.

You have said you want this moment to be a circuit breaker. Here is one available immediately and at no cost to the public purse: a British government that treats the intimidation of its own citizens by a foreign mission as a matter of national security rather than an irritant in a bilateral relationship.

We would welcome your reply, and would be glad to meet you or your officials.

Yours sincerely,

Tenzin Rabga Tashi, Campaigns Lead, Free Tibet
Pema Yoko, Tibet Action Institute
Hsuan-Yi Li, Taiwan Democracy
Rahima Mahmut, Stop Uyghur Genocide
Khadro Tsokyi, Students for a Free Tibet
Phuntsok Norbu, Chair, Tibetan Community in Britain
Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong
Benedict Rogers, Fortify Rights
Tashi Samuels, National Coordinator, Voluntary Tibet Advocacy Group UK
Tenzin Yangzom and Lobsang Yangtso, Interim Co-Directors, International Tibet Network Secretariat
Shao Jiang, June Fourth Sparks
Daniel Tsz Kin KWOK, Dandelion Solidarity
Uncle Leo — Former Assistant to Hong Kong Legislative Council Member Ted Hui
Freman Wu – Britons in Hong Kong
Bond Yellow – Together in Exeter (TIE)
Hong Choi – Hong Kong Aid
Democracy for Hong Kong (D4HK), Sean Chan, Spokesperson
Clara Cheung – Assembly of Citizens Representatives, Hong Kong (ACRHK)