Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

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The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident was an incident occurring on January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in which six people engaged in self-immolation. The Chinese government and media claimed the people to be Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong denied that those people could have been practitioners. It is disputed whether the event was actually staged by the Chinese government in order to discredit the practice. However, survivers from the incident publicly admitted that they were, indeed, Falun Gong practioners, and committed the act in accordance with the teachings of Falun Gong.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Falun Gong response 3 Chinese news response 4 Responses and criticisms 4.1 Aftermath 4.2 Criticism 4.3 Third party criticisms 5 References

[edit] Summary

From July 22, 1999 to the end of 2002, tens of thousand of Falun Gong practitioners had protested in the center of Beijing--Tiananmen Square. A CNN report from January 23 reports the following:

“A man sit [sic] down on the pavement just northeast of the Peoples' Heroes Monument at the center of the square. After pouring gasoline on his clothes he set himself on fire. Police ran to the man and extinguished the flames. Moments later four more people set themselves alight as military police detained the CNN crew, which had been taping the events. As flames spread through their clothing the four raised their hands above their heads and staggered about. One of the four, a man, was detained and driven away in a police van. He appeared to have serious burns on his face, and CNN producer Lisa Weaver said she could smell burning flesh as the van slowly passed.”^[1]

According to China's People's Daily, while the four policemen were frantically trying to put out the fire on the burning man, he shouted: “Falun Dafa is the fundamental law of all.”[1] The other four protesters were women; one of them died on the scene.

[edit] Falun Gong response

Within 24 hours of the incident, Falun Gong issued a press statement denying any practitioners were involved in the incident: “The Xinhua News Agency’s report that five members of the Falun Gong meditation group set themselves on fire Tuesday in China's Tiananmen Square is yet another attempt by the PRC regime to defame the practice of Falun Gong…. This so-called suicide attempt on Tiananmen Square has nothing to do with Falun Gong practitioners because the teachings of Falun Gong prohibit any form of killing. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of the practice, has explicitly stated that suicide is a sin.”^[2] It was claimed to be a staged incident to smear the practice and escalate the suppression.^[3]

[edit] Chinese news response

The Chinese media reported that the individuals came from Kaifeng city. The male, Wang Jindong, brought his wife and daughter, and there were four females of two mother-daughter pairs: Chen Guo, a nineteen-year-old college student and her mother Hao Huijun; Liu Siying, a twelve-year-old girl, and her mother Liu Chunling. The media reported that Liu Chunling died from her injuries, and her daughter Siying died two months later. Two other participants, Liu Baorong and Liu Yunfang were stopped before they could set fire to themselves. All but the twelve-year-old girl had protested the ban in Tiananmen Square previously, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.^{[4][this source's reliability may need verification]} however, major inconsistencies among one the main participants' history as a Falun Gong practitioner have been pointed out, and other aspects of the participants behaviour and reference to the teachings of Falun Dafa have been reported as fallacious by Falun Gong related commentators.^{[citation needed]}[2]

[edit] Responses and criticisms

[edit] Aftermath

According to the People's Daily, Liu Yunfang was the chief instigator and organizer of the incident. In August, 2000 he saw a holy scene during meditation: his “Buddha body” appeared after he set himself on fire at Tiananmen Square. Wang Jindong, the secondary organizer, also was enlightened in December, 2000. He told others that only by self-immolation on Tiananmen Square on New Year’s Eve could consummation be reached. They went to Beijing seven days before the incident. Chen Guo, who was studying music, once asked whether it hurts when one is on fire. Wang assured her that “pain is the feeling of ordinary people. Cultivators will not feel pain, and it will only take a second for them to rise into heaven.” [3]

A year after the incident, an interview with the foreign press was organized in April 2002, after the survivors had somewhat recovered. Jeremy Page from Reuters met the two surviving females, who were still being cared for in a hospital. Chen Guo, now only 20, had a face of blotchy grafted skin with no nose and no ears and one eye covered by a flap of skin. She had lost both her hands. Her mother had also lost her ears and nose, and both eyes were covered with skin grafts. She too had no hands. When asked why they set themselves on fire she said: “We wanted to show the government that Falun Gong was good.”^[5] Wang Jindong was interviewed in jail. The fire had left him with scarred, leathery cheeks and blackened fingers. It is noted however, that the interviews were conducted only in the presence of CCP officials. A New York Times analysis of the report also states that "[w]ith propaganda streaming in from seemingly opposite ends of the universe, the conflicting claims are difficult to assess" ^[6]

Liu Yunfang was sentenced to life in prison, Wang Jindong received a fifteen-year sentence and a Beijing resident who provided them lodging and helped in the preparation received a seven-year sentence.

Since the immolation was reported, Falun Gong has denied that these people were practitioners. When reporting the incident many Western media have presented the claims of both sides. A report by CNN.com states that “Beijing has intensified its clamp-down on the group after the incident despite Falun Gong leaders denying its members were involved....”^[7]

Hannah Beech, writing in Beijing for Time magazine, has stated: "If the smoky haze around the snowy square has dissipated, the questions surrounding the dramatic incident have not. A Beijing arm of the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong strongly suggested the protesters, one of whom died, were devotees. "We heeded a call from our master to strengthen our fight against evil," said a member of the group based in the Chinese capital. Yet hours later, Falun Gong's New York head office distanced itself from the act: "This so-called suicide attempt on Tiananmen Square has nothing to do with Falun Gong practitioners because the teachings of Falun Gong prohibit any form of killing."^[8]

[edit] Criticism

A video recording of the incident, False Fire, produced by New Tang Dynasty Television, reports the incident of 23 January 2001 as "the most highly publicized event" staged by the Chinese government to "persecute Falun Gong" and "turn public opinion against the practice." The same recording contains allegations on several supposed inconsistencies in the Chinese Government's version of the story:

• Police were carrying pieces of fire-fighting equipment on the day of the self-immolations, when they were not normally known to carry fire extinguishers on duty.

• As seen in the above video clipping, one of the women involved in the immolations, Liu Chunling, appears to be hit on the head by a blunt object as police attempt to put out the fire. The recording argues that Liu died from a severe blow to the head.

• The camera zooms in on the scene as it unfolds; however, surveillance cameras in Tiananmen Square are usually fixed.

• The man involved in the self-immolation, Wang Jindong, shouts comments that do not form part of Falun Dafa teachings. His sitting position also does not reflect the full or half lotus position as in the Falun Dafa teachings.

• The hospital treatment of the victims, as recorded by Chinese state media, is inconsistent with proper care of severe burn victims: for instance, patients were not kept in sterile rooms; moreover, the girl who allegedly underwent a tracheotomy appeared to be able to speak and sing clearly mere days after the surgery ^{[9][this source's reliability may need verification][10][this source's reliability may need verification][11][this source's reliability may need verification]}

The video also states that prior to 23 January 2001, there had been no incidents of self-immolation among Falun Gong practitioners in the world.

On the other hand, there are no available reports by independent parties or qualified experts which verify some of the claims made in the video; such as equipment of the Tiananmen Square Police, and operating characteristics of the surveillance cameras. Furthermore, New Tang Dynasty Television has been described as a Falun Gong related media outlet.^[12]

[edit] Third party criticisms

Human rights advocate Chandra D Smith writes in her paper published in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion^[13], that "The propaganda capitalized on the alleged self-immolation of five Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001 in which a mother died and her 12-year-old daughter was severely burned." and that "By repeatedly broadcasting images of the girl’s burning body and interviews with the others saying they believed self-immolation would lead them to paradise, the government convinced many Chinese that Falun Gong was an ‘evil cult.’"

Several human rights NGOs have condemned the incident as a government staged hoax to escalate the persecution of Falun Gong. For example, Karen Parker of the International Educational Development states at the 53rd session Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, United Nations:

"State terrorism in the form of Government terror against its own people produced far more gross violations of human rights than any other form of terrorism; an example was China's treatment of the Falun Gong. The Government had sought to justify its terrorism against Falun Gong by calling it an evil cult that had caused deaths and the break-up of families, but the organization's investigation showed that the only deaths and resulting family breakups had been at the hands of Chinese authorities, who had resorted to extreme torture and unacceptable detention of thousands of people. International Educational Development had discovered that a self-immolation cited by the Chinese Government as proof that the Falun Gong was an "evil cult" in fact had been staged. The international community and the Subcommission should urgently address this situation."[4]

Furthermore, the United Nations' International Education Development (IED) at the UN Human Rights Commission in August 2001, stated:

"This government took out this so-called self-immolation incident that happened on January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square and used this as evidence against Falun Gong. We have reached the conclusion after watching a videotape on this incident, that this incident has however been completely orchestrated by the government.

[edit] References