Tiananmen Square Self-immolation Incident - Background

Background

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a form of spiritual qigong practice that involves meditation, energy exercises, and a philosophy drawing on Buddhist and Taoist tradition. The practice was introduced by Li Hongzhi in Northeast China in the spring of 1992, and by the late 1990s had attracted tens of millions of followers. Falun Gong initially enjoyed official recognition support during the early years of its development. By the mid-1990s, however, Chinese authorities sought to rein in the influence of qigong practices, enacting more stringent requirements on the country’s various qigong denominations. In 1996, Falun Gong came under increasing criticism and surveillance from the country’s security apparatus.

0n 15 April 1999, more than ten thousand practitioners congregated outside Communist Party of China headquarters in Zhongnanhai to request legal recognition. That evening, then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin issued a decision to eradicate Falun Gong. At Jiang's direction, on 7 June 1999 a special leading group was established within the party’s Central Committee to manage the suppression. The resulting organisation, called the 6-10 Office, assumed the role of coordinating the anti-Falun Gong media coverage in the state-run press, as well influencing other party and state entities such as the courts and security agencies. On 19 July, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a document effectively banning the practice of Falun Gong. The following day, hundreds of adherents were detained by security forces.

The suppression that followed was characterised by what Amnesty International called a "massive propaganda campaign" intended to justify the suppression by portraying Falun Gong as superstitious, dangerous, and incompatible with the official ideology. Tens of thousands of Falun Gong adherents were imprisoned, and by the end of 1999, reports began to emerge of torture in custody. According to Ian Johnson, authorities were given broad mandates to eliminate Falun Gong and pursue the coercive conversion of practitioners, but were not scrutinized for the methods they used. This resulted in the widespread use of torture, sometimes resulting in death.

Following the ban, Tiananmen Square—a central point for several major historical protests—was one of the main venues where Falun Gong practitioners protested the suppression. The Falun Gong protests were characterised as peaceful "appeals," and typically involved raising banners in defence of the group, or staging meditation sit-ins. By 25 April 2000, more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested. Seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration in the Square on 1 January 2001.