Welcome to the 27th meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.
Today we have with us two witnesses whom I've known personally. These are two extraordinary individuals. They are brothers, Shenli Lin and Mingli Lin. Both are Mandarin speakers, and as a result, we will be doing the translation from Mandarin to the two official languages and back again, which will slow us down a bit.
Both of our witnesses are originally from the People's Republic of China. Both now reside in Canada. Shenli Lin arrived in Canada after a brief period of imprisonment. He had been in prison for practising Falun Gong, a practice that is simply a matter of following one's conscience. He was a prisoner of conscience during his period of imprisonment, before coming to Canada.
His brother, Mingli Lin, was one of 13 individuals mentioned in a motion asking that those individuals be repatriated to Canada where they could join family members. That motion was passed by the House of Commons unanimously in October 2002.
What I hope we can concentrate on in our hearings today is what happened subsequent to that.