I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number five of the House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Pursuant to the motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on February 20, 2020, today is the second meeting of the subcommittee on its study of the human rights situation of the Uighurs.
Today's witnesses are appearing by video conference and proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much as in regular committee meetings. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “Floor”, “English” or “French”. As you are speaking, if you plan to alternate from one language to the other, you will need to also switch the interpretation channel so it aligns with the language you are speaking. You might want to allow for a short pause when switching languages.
When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. Should any technical challenges arise, such as in relation to interpretation or a problem with your audio, please advise the chair immediately and the technical team will work to resolve the problem.
Before we begin, we would like to emphasize our focus on Uighurs. Several of our witnesses we've heard from are experts in human rights in general, and some will be here with an emphasis on China. There are and will be opportunities through future meetings of this committee and other government committees to address many issues in respect to China and other human rights issues. I say this because our witnesses are here to share their expertise on Uighurs, so to reiterate, the focus is on Uighurs.
I commend all our witnesses from yesterday's meeting. They were truly amazing. We had experts, we had advocates, we had academics. We had personal stories of courage and bravery. We thank them for coming forward.
I now welcome today's witnesses. For this panel, we have from the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, the head, William Browder; as an individual, Olga Alexeeva, sinologist and professor of contemporary Chinese history, from the Université du Québec at Montreal; Azeezah Kanji, legal academic and journalist; and Errol Mendes, professor of law and president of the International Commission of Jurists Canada.
Clerk, I believe that is the order in which we will be going.
Mr. Browder, you will start off. You will have six minutes to address us with your opening statement and then we'll move to members' questions.
You may begin.