World

5 Torch Selves In Tiananmen Square

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 23, 2001 / 8:05 AM EST / CBS

Five Falun Gong followers doused themselves with gasoline and set themselves ablaze in China's Tiananmen Square on Tuesday in a suicide attempt that left one sect member dead and the other four injured.

The attempted group suicide is the latest in a series of increasingly radical actions by sect members defying the communist government's 18-month ban on Falun Gong.

It came as police geared up for sect protests in Tiananmen at Wednesday's start of the Lunar New Year, China's biggest holiday.

The group has drawn millions of followers with a mix of slow-motion exercises and eclectic ideas that followers say promote health and good citizenship. The government disagrees, accusing the group of deceiving practitioners and causing the death of 1,600 followers.

On Tuesday, the followers, a man and four women, poured gasoline on themselves and set themselves afire in two "suicidal blazes," the government's Xinhua News Agency said.

Police rushed to the site, Xinhua said. The brief report added that one woman burned to death and the other injured were sent to hospital.

A producer and cameraman with CNN television witnessed the protest, but police immediately confiscated their videotape and detained them for 90 minutes.

CNN later reported that one man sat down, poured gasoline on himself and then set himself ablaze. Moments later, as the two journalists were being detained, they saw four more people on fire, staggering forward with their hands raised.

Officers at the Tiananmen Square police station refused comment, referring all questions to Xinhua.

No traces of the fiery protest could be found on the square three hours later. But it caused police to increase their usually heavy patrols on the vast plaza in central Beijing. In one pedestrian underpass leading to the square, police stopped everyone, patting them down and inspecting their bags.

Police battled sporadic Falun Gong protests throughout Tuesday.

Around noon, small batches of protesters handed out leaflets and raised banners underneath the portrait of Mao Tse-tung at the square's north end before being arrested.

"Falun Dafa is good," one middle-aged woman yelled, using another name for the group. A plainclothes agent tripped her and sent her sprawling as she ran to elude arrest.

The square, China's symbolic political heart, has been the focus of largely peaceful Falun Gong protests since the July 1999 ban was imposed.

Since January 1, China's state media have stepped up attacks against Falun Gong and its founder, a Chinese former clerk who lives in exile in the United States.

Li denies having any political agenda.

But in a January 1 message posted on the group's official Website, Li appeared to urge his followers to take more drastic action by telling them they could rightfully go beyond the movement's principle virtue of forbearance.

Until now protesters have rarely resisted detention, arret or beatings by police and have even expressed sympathy with their captors, citing their belief in forbearance.

The official People's Daily said on Monday Li was inciting his followers to "clash with the Communist Party" and "destroy social stability."

Beijing has accused Falun Gong of being in league with a whole range of dissident forces, including separatists in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, supporters of Taiwan independence and Chinese democracy activists.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, preaches a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese breathing exercises. It has shocked the Communist Party by its extraordinary persistence and ability to organize mass protests.

The ban on the sect was triggered by an April protest in which 10,000 members surrounded Beijing's leadership compound demanding official recognition of Falun Gong as a religion.