Good afternoon, colleagues. I see a quorum.
We are the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. This is our 31st meeting.
We are continuing our look into human rights in Eritrea.
Let me extend on behalf of the entire committee our apologies to our witnesses for our very late start. I see that we are 20 minutes after our starting point. That is partly a result of being in a room far from Parliament Hill, but it's primarily the result of the fact that we had an unanticipated vote in the House, and all parties had to go to it, wait until it was completed, and then come here.
That is in no way a reflection of the importance of this issue or of how seriously we take it. It is simply a reflection of one of those unfortunate exigencies.
I can see from the number of people here that there is considerable interest in this subject, so without further ado I will introduce our witnesses.
Today, representing the Coalition of Eritrean Canadian Communities and Organizations are Lambros Kyriakakos and Senai Iman, who are respectively the chairman and legal director for that organization.
Gentlemen, what we'll do here is allow you to make your testimony and then turn to questions from the members of the subcommittee.
For the benefit of members of the subcommittee, given the restrictions on time, I'll ask the clerk to speak to you about who has to leave early for S.O. 31s or that kind of thing, in order to accommodate anyone who has to leave early. We will try to make adjustments to the questioning order to reflect that, while still allowing ourselves to go past the normal wrap-up time of 2 p.m.
Without further ado, may I ask our two witnesses to begin, please?