Five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. The incident remains disputed; Chinese government sources identified the five as practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious movement banned in mainland China, and portrayed the self-immolations as evidence of the movement's dangerous nature. Falun Gong sources disputed their identification as practitioners and stated that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. According to David Ownby, a "certain number" of sceptical journalists suspected that the self-immolations were staged, while the incident had convinced "much of the Western media" that Falun Gong was a "cult".
According to Chinese state media, a group of seven people travelled to Beijing from Henan province, and five set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square. In the Chinese press, the event was used as proof of the dangers of Falun Gong and to legitimise the government's campaign against the group. The official account of events soon came under scrutiny, however. Two weeks after the self-immolation event, The Washington Post published an investigation into the identities and background of the participants. Regarding Liu Chunling and her 12-year-old daughter, Liu Siying, who were both killed in the incident, it reported that neighbors believed the mother "led a troubled life" and had suffered from psychological problems. The neighbor also hardly noticed when Liu and her daughter disappeared and stated they never witnessed seeing the mother practise Falun Gong. The newspaper also cited the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy as stating that with the exception of 12-year-old Liu Siying, the other four participants had previously protested Beijing's crackdown against Falun Gong.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote that "the incident was among one of the most difficult stories for reporters in Beijing at the time to report on" because of a lack of independent information available. The self-immolation victims were accessible only to reporters from China's state-run press; international media were barred from contacting them, as well as their family members. A wide variety of opinions and interpretations of what may have happened then emerged: the event may have been set up by the government to frame Falun Gong; it may have been an authentic protest; the self-immolators could have been "new or unschooled" Falun Gong practitioners; and other views. In July 2001, Craig S. Smith wrote in The New York Times that Li had previously spoke out against suicide but had remained silent on the topic of suicide following the incident.
The campaign of state propaganda that followed the event eroded public sympathy for Falun Gong. Time magazine noted that many Chinese had previously felt Falun Gong posed no real threat, and that the state's crackdown against it had gone too far. After the self-immolation, however, the media campaign against the group gained significant traction. Posters, leaflets, and videos were produced detailing the supposed detrimental effects of Falun Gong practice, and regular anti-Falun Gong classes were scheduled in schools. CNN compared the government's propaganda initiative to those of past political moments during the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution. Later, as public opinion turned against the group, according to Falun Gong practitioners, the Chinese authorities began sanctioning the "systematic use of violence" to eliminate Falun Gong. In the year following the incident, Freedom House said the imprisonment, torture, and deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in custody increased significantly.
Background
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a form of spiritual qigong practice that involves meditative exercises, and a philosophy drawing on Buddhist and Taoist tradition introduced by Li Hongzhi in Northeast China in the spring of 1992. By the late 1990s, it had attracted tens of millions of followers. Falun Gong initially enjoyed official recognition and support during the early years of its development. However, qigong has also attracted critics who condemned the practise as superstition and pseudoscience. The first few years of Falun Gong coincided with a period of growing criticism of qigong as being fraudulent. David Ownby wrote that critics of qigong gained the "upper hand" in influencing the government by the early 1990s. By the mid-1990s, Chinese authorities sought to rein in the growth of qigong practices, enacting more stringent requirements on the country's various qigong denominations. In 1996, Falun Gong came under increasing criticism and surveillance from the country's security apparatus.
On 25 April 1999, more than 10,000 practitioners gathered outside Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headquarters in Zhongnanhai to request legal recognition. That evening, then-CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin issued a decision to eradicate Falun Gong. At Jiang's direction, on 7 June 1999, a special leading group was established within the party's Central Committee to manage the persecution. The resulting organisation, called the 610 Office, assumed the role of coordinating the anti-Falun Gong media coverage in the state-run press, as well as influencing other party and state entities such as the courts and security agencies. On 19 July, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a document effectively banning the practice of Falun Gong. The following day, hundreds of practitioners were detained by security forces.
The persecution that followed was characterised by a "massive propaganda campaign" intended to justify the persecution by portraying Falun Gong as superstitious, dangerous, and incompatible with the official ideology. Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were imprisoned, and by the end of 1999, reports began to emerge of torture in custody. According to Ian Johnson, authorities were given broad mandates to eliminate Falun Gong and pursue the coercive conversion of practitioners. Still, they were not scrutinised for the methods they used. This resulted in the widespread use of torture, sometimes resulting in death.
During the crackdown, Li Hongzhi called on his followers to resist the government's persecution and defend Falun Gong's teachings. According to David Ownby, Li began to portray the crackdown as a "final trial" for practitioners and appeared to promise that those who endured the persecution and died as martyrs would attain "consummation", or enlightenment. Ownby noted that Li was outside of China during the crackdown and criticized Li for what he saw as a disparity between the sacrifices that Li was willing to make and of his requests to his followers. Ownby wrote, "Li scorns those practitioners – even in China, where stakes of resistance are high – who lack the courage of their convictions, [and] seems to ask that his followers make sacrifices that he himself has not made".
Tiananmen Square was one of the main venues where Falun Gong practitioners gathered to protest the persecution, usually by raising banners in defence of the group, or staging peaceful meditation sit-ins. Ian Johnson of The Wall Street Journal estimated that by 25 April 2000, more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested for attempting to demonstrate in Beijing, most of them in or on the way to Tiananmen Square. Seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration in the Square on 1 January 2001.
Chinese authorities struggled throughout the early years of the persecution to turn public opinion against Falun Gong. Instead, the campaign garnered criticisms from across a wide spectrum of Chinese society, with an article in a liberal Chinese media outlet on how repression in Nazi Germany escalated over time. According to Human Rights Watch, "the leadership's frustration with the failure of its efforts to quickly and thoroughly dismantle Falungong was also evident in its media campaign." The state-run press admitted in late 2000 that Falun Gong was continuing to stage protests in defiance of the ban, and proclaimed that "the 'broad masses' had to be made to understand the 'duration, complexity and ferocity of our battle with Falun Gong.'" In January 2001, Chinese authorities launched a new wave of propaganda to discredit Falun Gong, in which they urged state-run media organizations to vilify the group.
Incident
On 23 January 2001, the eve of Chinese New Year, five people in Tiananmen Square poured gasoline over their clothes and set themselves on fire.
A CNN film crew, which was there on a routine check for a possible Falun Gong protest, observed a man sitting down on the pavement northeast of the Monument to the People's Heroes at the centre of the square. He proceeded to pour gasoline over himself and set himself ablaze. Police officers quickly congregated on the scene and extinguished the flames. Shortly afterwards, another four people on the square set themselves alight. One of the four, a man, was detained and driven away in a police van.
CNN reported that at least two men were among the five people who immolated themselves after pouring gasoline over their bodies. The CNN crew began filming the events from a distance, but were quickly intercepted by military police, who detained the journalists and confiscated their equipment. The authorities then put out the flames consuming the other four people's clothing. A police van came to collect the badly burnt man. Two ambulances arrived almost 25 minutes later to collect the other four. The square was completely closed, and security was tight the next day, the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Police monitored public access to the square for the New Year celebrations, had fire extinguishers ready, and prevented Falun Gong practitioners from opening banners.
Participants
Xinhua named seven individuals as having been involved: Wang Jindong (王进东), Liu Chunling (刘春玲), Liu Siying (刘思影), Chen Guo (陈果), Hao Huijun (郝惠君), Liu Baorong (刘葆荣) and Liu Yunfang (刘云芳). Of these, Liu Chunling and Liu Siying, as well as Hao Huijun and Chen Guo, were a mother-daughter pair.
Liu Chunling reportedly died on the scene. Her 12-year-old daughter Liu Siying had been hospitalised at Jishuitan Hospital, with fourth-degree burns over 40 percent of her body, requiring the amputation of all ten fingers, when she died on 17 March 2001, "unexpectedly of heart troubles". The other three that set themselves on fire were reported to have been "severely disfigured". Liu Baorong and Liu Yunfang were reportedly stopped by police before they could light themselves on fire.
Initially, Beijing denied requests from Western journalists to interview the survivors, and only China Central Television and the official New China News Agency were permitted to speak with their relatives or colleagues. On 3 February 2001, state media reported statements by two of the self-immolators. Wang Jindong "insist[ed] that he is not worried about his horrific burns because he is a Falun Gong disciple" while Liu Siying "regretted her action and said she was cheated by her mother". In April 2002 the government allowed foreign journalists to interview the survivors in the presence of state officials. The interviewees refuted claims that the self-immolation was staged, showing their burn injuries as evidence, and denounced Falun Gong while expressing support for the authorities' handling of the group. When asked why they set themselves on fire, Hao Huijun replied that she had realized the futility of writing letters and demonstrating by waving banners, "so finally, we decided ... to make a big event to show our will to the world. ... We wanted to show the government that Falun Gong was good." At the time of the interview, Chen Guo and her mother were said to still be in the hospital, both having lost their hands, ears, and noses. Both her mother's eyes were covered with skin grafts. Wang Jindong, showing burns to his face, said he felt "humiliated because of my stupidity and fanatical ideas."
The state-run Xinhua News Agency released a story about the incident to foreign media two hours after the self-immolation occurred. Xinhua then distributed a fuller press release seven days later on Tuesday 30 January, in response to other media reports on the incident. On 31 January, a 30-minute special edition of the current affairs programme Forum presented the state's version of the events to the Chinese public. China Central Television aired footage, said to be taken by nearby surveillance cameras, of five people in flames.
Chinese authorities stated that the seven people who had come to Tiananmen Square with the intention of immolating themselves were all from the city of Kaifeng in Henan province. Xinhua asserted that the self-immolators were "avid practitioners" of Falun Gong who had taken up the practice between 1994 and 1997, and that they fantasised during the preceding week about "how wonderful it would be to enter heaven". Six of them reportedly took the train on 16 January, meeting Chen Guo, the daughter of one of them, upon their arrival in Beijing. The seven agreed to light themselves in different parts of the square at 2:30 pm on the designated day, using gasoline smuggled there in plastic soda bottles; each had been armed with two lighters in case one failed. According to the government-run China Association for Cultic Studies website, Wang Jindong stated afterwards that the group arrived in Tiananmen Square by two taxis, and were dropped off at the south of the Great Hall of the People, from where they walked to the spot where they would ignite themselves. Wang said he was approached by police as he was splitting open the soda bottles, and ignited himself hurriedly without assuming the lotus position. A press release from the Chinese government says that Liu Yunfang felt that the police were able to stop him burning himself because he had not attained the "required spiritual level."
Articles in the Yangcheng Evening News and the Southern Daily reported that police had evidence that a few foreign reporters had advance knowledge of the incident, and suggested that such reporters could be charged with "instigating and abetting a suicide." State media claimed surveillance video showed six or seven reporters from CNN, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse arriving just 10 minutes before the self-immolations took place; however, all three agencies denied advance knowledge of the incident—AP and AFP said they had no reporters in the square at the time. In contrast, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, said the CNN crew was there on a routine check for a possible Falun Gong protest.
Falun Gong response
Immediately following the self-immolation, the Falun Dafa Information Center denied that the self-immolators could have been Falun Gong practitioners, writing that Falun Gong's teachings prohibit killing and that suicide is considered a sin. Specifically, Wang Jindong was said to be multiple actors and not a real person. Falun Gong has also charged that all of the self-immolators were replaced with actors while inside the ambulance.
Falun Gong sources overseas questioned the official Chinese government account of the event, and apparent inconsistencies in the government's official narrative led to a hypothesis that the government staged the self-immolation to justify the persecution against Falun Gong by portraying its practitioners as irrational and suicidal. According to this hypothesis, the self-immolation participants were paid actors, and were presumably assured that the flames would be extinguished before doing real harm.