Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, 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. Falun Gong sources disputed the accuracy of these portrayals, and claimed that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. Several journalists have suggested the self-immolations were staged. According to Chinese state media, a group of seven people had travelled to Beijing from
Reactions to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests accounts refer to. As Louisa Lim notes in her book, "The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited", many young Chinese know almost nothing of the Tiananmen Square protests. In an informal survey, Lim showed the iconic photo of Tank Man to 100 Chinese university students; only 15 correctly identified it as being an image of Tiananmen Square. Perry Link, a Chinese language and literature scholar, writes, "The story of the massacre is banned from textbooks, the media, and all other public contexts." In 2014, Gu Yimin, a Chinese activist, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for attempting to hold