2013 Tiananmen Square attack A 4x4 vehicle crashed into a crowd and burst into flames near the portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square. All three people inside the car were killed as well as two tourists in the square–one Filipino woman and the other a male Chinese citizen from Guangdong province. Thirty-eight people were injured. Witnesses at the scene said that the car involved in the incident was honking its horn at pedestrians. Chinese police later issued a notice to Beijing hotels seeking information about two people from China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The notice described a vehicle and four Xinjiang number plates.
Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident practitioners, but were not scrutinised for the methods they used. This resulted in the widespread use of torture, sometimes resulting in death. 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 stage peaceful meditation sit-ins. 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