Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation

Date: January 23, 2001 • Location: Beijing, China

Five people attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, an act that many later claimed to have been staged by the Chinese Communist Party to frame Falun Gong and thus escalate their persecution.

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".