Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident
The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. Chinese government sources say that five members of Falun Gong set themselves on fire in the square. The official account of events soon came under scrutiny, however. A wide variety of opinions and interpretations of what may have happened then emerged. Tens of thousands of practitioners were imprisoned and tortured by the end of 1999. The persecution that was followed was characterised by a massive propaganda campaign.
About Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident in brief
The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. The incident is disputed; Chinese government sources say that five members of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that is persecuted in mainland China, set themselves on fire in the square. The official account of events soon came under scrutiny, however. A wide variety of opinions and interpretations of what may have happened then emerged. The campaign of state propaganda that followed the event eroded public sympathy for Fal Un Gong. Tens of thousands of practitioners were imprisoned and tortured by the end of 1999. The persecution that was followed was characterised by a massive propaganda campaign intended to justify the persecution by portraying Falun Un Gong as superstitious, dangerous, and dangerous to the official ideology of the Communist Party of China. The 6-10 June 1999 direction of persecution has resulted in the organisation of a special leading group to manage the anti-Falun Gong coverage in the state-run press, as well as influencing other party entities such as the courts and security agencies. On 19 July 1999, the Central Committee of the Party issued a document effectively banning the practice of Fal un Gong. The following day, hundreds of practitioners were detained by security forces, and hundreds of people were killed in custody. The number of practitioners in custody has increased significantly since then. In the year following the incident, Freedom House claimed that the imprisonment, torture, and deaths of FalUn Gong Practitioners in custody increased significantly.
It is estimated that more than 10,000 practitioners are still imprisoned in China, and thousands more have been tortured or have died in custody as a result of the persecution. The situation has been referred to as the ‘Falun Dafa’ crisis’, and has been described as ‘the worst religious persecution in the history of China’s history’. It has been estimated that at least 1,000 people have been killed in China in the past year. The death toll has risen to more than 2,000. The current death toll is believed to be around 1,500. The Chinese government claims that the number of people imprisoned in custody is in the hundreds of thousands, and that many of them are tortured or killed by the Chinese security forces. The figure is estimated to be at least 3,000 to 4,000, according to the Office of the Attorney General of the People’s Republic of China (OCP). The number of people in custody has also risen to around 2,500, according to the OCP. The number of prisoners has also increased by more than 50 per cent since the beginning of the year, and is expected to rise to around 5,000 in the year of 2014. The total number of prisoners in custody now stands at more than 1,200. The prison population has grown by more than 100,000 over the past few years, with many of the prisoners being women and children.
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