2016-09-04 - China 'Disappears' Dozens of Dissidents As G20 Summit Opens in Hangzhou As world leaders met in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou at the start of the G20 summit, dozens of dissidents, rights activists and ordinary Chinese seeking to highlight grievances against the government were subjected to "disappearances," detention and house arrest by China's state security police, rights activists told RFA. Citizen journalist Hang Xiuqiong, who writes for the Sichuan-based rights website Tianwang, said she saw at least eight people detained on a Hangzhou-bound train. "They are focusing on locking up petitioners ... they have already detained eight people on the Z9 service[to Hangzhou]. They're not letting them leave," Hang said. As U.S. President Barack Obama met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Chinese security forces threw an unprecedented security cordon around the summit venue. "There are security forces at every intersection, and the plainclothes police and riot police are everywhere," Hang told RFA. "Restaurants and hotels are all closed, and there are security checks at the entrance to all the hospitals, where they are checking people's bags." "All of the roads to the[venue] are closed, which is where I'm standing right now; they won't let me go any further," she said. "There are very few people on the streets, just police." China has launched an unprecedented "stability maintenance" operation ahead of the G20 summit, with many people deprived of their liberty in the weeks running up to the event, rights groups said. "Incidents of detention, enforced disappearance, forced travel, and house arrest have violated the human rights of many Chinese citizens," the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said in a statement on its website. It said rights activists and petitioners in neighboring counties and provinces have been particularly targeted by the authorities, with at least 42 people illegally deprived of their liberty in Jiangsu province and Shanghai. "A majority of these individuals have been forcibly disappeared, putting them outside any legal protections and, hence, at greater risk of torture and ill-treatment," the group said. It cited the detention of Wuxi-based activist Shen Aibin on Sept. 2 on suspicion of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Shen is currently being held in the Wuxi No. 2 Detention Center in Jiangsu province. At least nine activists from Shanghai were detained either at their homes or en route to Hangzhou, while it counted 22 forced disappearances of activists from Beijing and Shanghai, including Ye Hongxia, Wang Kouma and Liu Feiyue. It said another Shanghai-based activist, Fan Yiyang was taken on "vacation" by police to Zhejiang's Yandang mountains on Aug. 23 as part of the G20 preparations. Sichuan-based activist Huang Qi, who founded the Tianwang website, said another of the site's contributors, citizen journalist Yang Xiuqiong, had also gone missing on Saturday. "We don't know Yang Xiuqiong's status right now," Huang said. "She has basically fallen off the radar in Hangzhou." Calls to fellow activists Lin Xiurong and He Yalin rang unanswered after they traveled to Hangzhou on Sunday. Pulling out all the stops Chengdu-based rights activist Chen Qiongshu said she was detained and taken to a third location after being detained by police in Hangzhou at the end of August. "We are currently in Jiulonggou," Chen said. "We left Hangzhou on Sept. 1, and ... then we were brought here." "There are people following us the whole time, officers from the local police station and government officials; there were seven of them yesterday," she said. "We won't be able to go home until tomorrow ... everyone who goes to Hangzhou is getting detained." Veteran media commentator Jia Ping said the level of security was extraordinary. "They have clearly used the G20 as a starting point to develop from," he said. "This is just a discussion forum for developed and developing countries to meet, but China has to pull out all the stops as if it were the Olympics." "But its only effect has been to make people care less, and to make them very resentful," Jia said. "The whole thing has cost a fortune, and they really couldn't care less about ordinary people." A Hangzhou resident who asked not to be named said an eerie calm had descended on the city after the authorities banned privately registered vehicles from the streets and encouraged large swathes of the population to leave town. "It's even emptier than it is on Chinese New Year; no vehicles are allowed to be out," the resident said. "It feels like[a ghost town] with nine out of 10 of the shops shuttered," he said. "Anyone whose official residency papers aren't here in Hangzhou has had to go back to their birthplace." Activists in Fujian and the northeastern province of Heilongjiang said police had already mobilized to prevent people with grievances from heading to the G20 in the hope of highlighting them. "There are several petitioners from Fuzhou who were intercepted at the Wenzhou railway station ... We don't know what has happened to them," Fuzhou-based activist Zhuang Lei told RFA. And Heilongjiang activist Sun Dongsheng said he knew of six people who were detained on a train en route to the G20 venue, although it was unclear if they were the same as the eight counted by Tianwang's Hang. "Two of them were going to visit friends, and two were going to get medical treatment," Sun said. "Three have already been escorted home, their cameras confiscated." President Xi on Sunday called on world leaders to avoid "empty talk" and confront sluggish economic growth and rising protectionism at the start of the G20. The world economy "still faces multiple risks and challenges including a lack of growth momentum and consumption, turbulent financial markets, receding global trade and investment," Xi told the assembled leaders, who represent some 85 percent of the world's GDP and two-thirds of its population. China is hoping a successful G20 will project a global image of an assured and powerful nation. But experts fear the gathering will be short on substance, with scant progress made on what to do about the conflict in Syria and the global refugee crisis. The U.S. and China on Saturday ratified the Paris climate accord, paving the way for implementation of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the two largest producers. 5.09.2016 - Ghost town: how China emptied Hangzhou to guarantee 'perfect' G20 The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has wrapped up his country's first G20 summit by urging the thousands of foreign journalists who flocked to east China for the event to carve out a special place in their hearts for the host city. And visiting correspondents are unlikely to forget Hangzhou any time soon. In recent days, foreign journalists have been astonished and bewildered at how China's authoritarian rulers have managed to transform a usually bustling metropolis of 6 million inhabitants into a virtual ghost town to guarantee a trouble-free summit. More than a third of Hangzhou's population were reportedly "convinced" to leave town as part of what Chinese state media called a massive exodus that saw cars forced off the roads and a seven-day public holiday declared. Thousands of residents were ordered to vacate the towering apartment blocks that surround the conference centre where world leaders had gathered, to prevent an assault from above. Dissidents were placed under house arrest or forced to leave the city by security agents. And entire neighbourhoods were left deserted after migrant workers were pushed out of the city when factories and building sites where they work were ordered to shut down in a bid to cut pollution. Foreign journalists have spent days trudging through Hangzhou's eerie and empty backstreets - anxious Communist party security agents trailing their every step - in a luckless quest to find interviewees. Wu Yuhua, a 43-year-old DIY store owner, said he had decided to abandon the city after his customers, most of whom are migrant workers, stopped coming in the days leading up to the G20. "There's no business," he complained. "But you still have to pay the rent." Li Yindeng, a noodle shop owner, told the New York Times she had been ordered to shut up shop. "They told us, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and if anything happens while Obama is here, the officials could be sacked, so they said, __�Please close.'" Forcing the masses to leave town has not been the only tactic employed to ensure that China's G20 debut, which Beijing sees as a chance to bolster its reputation as a great power, went off without a hitch. A vast security operation has also been rolled out, with armed special forces guarding the entrances to the city and Swat teams policing intersections across town. Some 760,000 citizen volunteers - many of them senior citizens in bright red armbands - have been deployed to keep tabs on the city. Even in Beijing, more than (745 miles) 1,200km north of Hangzhou, groups of elderly "public security volunteers" can be seen milling around at bus shelters or lurking under trees. Since world leaders began assembling in China last week, they have spent their days gossiping about friends and relatives, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for potential terrorists and spies. On Monday evening, Xi declared his government's mammoth effort a resounding success. "You have recorded the exciting moments of China's G20 presidency," he told reporters who had gathered in this strangely empty megacity. "You have conveyed to the world the success of the summit ___[and] it is your hard work that has helped to seal China's mark on the G20." Foreign correspondents left the announcement still trying to make sense of what they had seen.