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.: "Over and over again, [Falun Gong practitioners] insisted—correctly—that there is no sanction for violence in Li Hongzhi’s writings or in Falun Gong practice, whether it be violence directed at someone else or at oneself.""On Ten Year Anniversary, Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation Continues to Be Deadly Frame-up", Falun Dafa Information Center, 19 January 2011 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".: "[T]hese diaspora practitioners—together with a certain number of skeptical foreign journalists—began to point out a number of anomalies which might lead one to wonder if the events were as straight-forward as Xinhua had portrayed them."

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;Danny Schechter, "Falun Gong's Challenge to China" (Akashic Books, 2001) 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.Sarah Cook, Sarah (4 November 2013) "Be Skeptical of the Official Story on the Tiananmen Car Crash" Freedom House.

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.Faison, Seth "In Beijing: A Roar of Silent Protestors" The New York Times, 27 April 1999 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.David Palmer, Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China. Columbia University Press (2007) In 1996, Falun Gong came under increasing criticism and surveillance from the country's security apparatus.James Tong, Revenge of the Forbidden City. Oxford University Press (2009).

On 25 April 1999, more than 10,000 practitioners gathered outside Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headquarters in Zhongnanhai to request legal recognition.Ethan Gutmann, "An Occurrence on Fuyou Street", National Review, 13 July 2009. 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.Sarah Cook and Leeshai Lemish, 'The 610 Office: Policing the Chinese Spirit', China Brief, Volume 11 Issue 17 (9 November 2011) 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.Amnesty International 'China: The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called "heretical organization"' 23 March 2000 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.Ian Johnson (26 December 2000). "Death Trap – How One Chinese City Resorted to Atrocities to Control Falun Dafa" . The Wall Street Journal.

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.Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Falun Gong Holds Protests On Anniversary of Big Sit-In." The New York Times. 26 April 2001. 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.Pomfret, John.(12 October 1999) "Cracks in China's Crackdown", The Washington Post. 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.Ethan Gutmann (2014), "The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem," Prometheus Books, pp 164–166. 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