Will Obama speak for human rights at the G20?

Ahead of the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, this weekend, Chinese dissidents urged U.S. President Barack Obama to speak out against the Chinese government’s severe human rights violations during what will be his last trip to the communist country. The government is working overtime to revamp Hangzhou and impress its foreign visitors, temporarily closing churches and releasing five jailed Christians in the process.

On Tuesday, a group of Chinese activists met with Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, detailing the deterioration of religious freedom and human rights in China. During the 90-minute meeting, they touched on topics such as the cross demolition in Zhejiang, the imprisonment of human rights lawyers and activists, the silencing of dissent, and the implementation of restrictive laws that limit interaction between the Chinese and foreigners. China Aid’s Bob Fu stressed that “the religious freedom and human rights situation in China [is] the worst since the time of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.”

Exiled human rights lawyer Teng Biao, Tibetan activist Golog Jigme, Uyghur Human Rights Project’s Alim Seytoff, social activist Lu Jun, and family members of imprisoned Chinese activists also attended the meeting. They hope that when Obama meets with President Xi Jinping for bilateral talks Saturday, he will call on his Chinese counterpart to release prisoners of conscience, including 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) also called on Obama to take a stronger stance.

“In his final trip to China, he should do something radically different—mildly raising human rights concerns accomplishes very little,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chair of the CECC. He recommended Obama visit Liu’s wife or a house church, or “organize a public statement with other G-20 members connecting religious freedom, labor rights, and civil society development with economic prosperity and better bilateral cooperation.”

But Smith isn’t optimistic the president will take his advice, noting “no one wants to upset China’s big event.”

And for the Chinese, this is definitely a big event. This is the first G-20 Summit held in China, and with world leaders such as Obama, British Prime Minister Theresa May, and Russian President Vladimir Putin traveling to Hangzhou, Chinese officials are determined to show off. They’ve spent billions on revamping the city with new roads, buildings, trees, and—to the excitement of residents—homes. They temporarily closed factories to ensure blue skies.

To decongest the roads and sidewalks, officials provided Hangzhou residents with an extra seven days of vacation and discounted tours to draw them out of the city. State-run media report more than 2 million of the city’s 6 million residents are expected to leave. They’ve called in police and security guards from nearby cities to patrol Hangzhou’s streets.

Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang province, where Xi has deep ties: Between 2002 and 2007, Xi served as Zhejiang’s governor and Party Committee Secretary. In recent years, Zhejiang implemented a campaign to demolish the crosses of 2,000 churches and arrest pastors and parishioners who dared to object. In preparation for the G-20 summit, authorities told local house churches to temporarily stop meeting for security measures, according to China’s Global Times. Even government-sanctioned churches are targeted: Guardian reporter Tom Phillips tweeted a picture of the large Chongyi church in Hangzhou to show that the words “Jesus Loves You” had been removed from the church’s facade.

At the same time, the pressure to look good in front of an international audience also prompted Zhejiang authorities to suddenly release five members of Yazhong Church who had been detained for four months for protesting the demolition of Guankou Church. A Wenzhou Christian told China Aid the release was an attempt to “pacify the people before the summit meeting,” as officials worry the Christians have been detained for too long. “The local government was concerned about petitions organized by the family members, thinking higher officials would pressure them.”

Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian Obama has a responsibility to bring up Liu during his meeting with Xi.

“I do think that it would be unconscionable for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner to fail to publicly call for the release of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner,” she said. “Unconscionable.”