Tiananmen Square Self-immolation Incident - Third-party Findings

Third-party Findings

The identities of some of the self-immolators, and their relationship to Falun Gong, was called into question by an investigation in Washington Post by reporter Philip Pan. The state-run Xinhua News Agency had reported that Liu Chunling's adoptive mother spoke of her daughter's "obsession with Falun Gong", her "worshipping of Li Hongzhi", and that Liu would teach her daughter Falun Gong. Yet two weeks after the event took place, Pan travelled to Kaifeng, the hometown of the Liu and her daughter, both of whom died in connection with the self-immolation. Pan interviewed neighbours and those close to the participants, and found that Liu worked in a nightclub, took money to keep men company, and beat her mother and daughter. No one ever saw her practise Falun Gong. According to David Ownby, a University of Montreal historian and expert on Falun Gong, Pan’s portrayal of Liu Chunlin is highly inconsistent with the typical profile of a Falun Gong practitioner.

The identities of participants on Tiananmen Square was also called into question by a CNN producer on the scene. While the Chinese government claimed that a 12-year-old Liu Siying had set herself on fire at the urging of her mother, the CNN producer said that she did not see any children among the self-immolators.

Several observers have noted that foreign journalists were not allowed to interview the self-immolation victims recovering in hospitals. Even the victims’ relatives were not permitted to speak with them, according to David Ownby. Philip Pan wrote that "Beijing denied requests to interview Liu Siying and the three other survivors, who are all hospitalized ... A Kaifeng official said only China Central Television and the official New China News Agency were permitted to speak to their relatives or their colleagues. A man who answered the door at the Liu home referred questions to the government." The survivors were interviewed by the state-run press, however. In one such interview, CCTV interviewed the 12-year-old Liu Siying. Government sources reported Liu Siying had undergone a tracheotomy shortly before the interview. Speaking through approved media outlets, she said that her own mother told her to set herself on fire to reach the "heavenly golden kingdom"; journalist Danny Schechter doubted that the child would have been able to speak to the Chinese media so soon after a tracheotomy, yet Liu Siying appeared to be speaking clearly and singing in the interview.

Danny Schechter also drew attention to the fact that Xinhua had released a statement on the self-immolation to foreign media only hours after the event occurred. He noted that this was unusual because sensitive subjects in the Chinese press are almost never reported on a timely basis; the usual protocol is approval by several party officials before publication. The Wall Street Journal's Ian Johnson similarly observed the state media "reported death with unusual alacrity, implying that either the death took place earlier than reported or the usually cautious media had top-level approval to rush out electronic reports and a televised dispatch. The 7 p.m. local evening news, for example, had a filmed report from Mr. Tan's hometown of Changde, a small city in Hunan province. Most reports for the evening news are vetted by noon, so the daily broadcast rarely carries reports from the same day, let alone an event that happened at noon and involved satellite feeds from relatively remote parts of the country."

Questions were also raised over where the footage of the event came from, and the speed with which camera crews appeared on scene. Chinese government media reported that the close-up shots in its video footage came from confiscated CNN tapes. CNN representatives argued that this was impossible, however, as their reporters were detained shortly after the event began. Philip Pan of the Washington Post was also suspicious of the positioning of the cameras, and the fact that the close-up shots shown on Chinese television were taken without police interference. "In some, the camera is clearly behind police barricades", the Washington Post article says. In addition, overhead surveillance camera footage seemed to show a man filming the scene using a small hand-held camera, rather than a large camera of the type used for TV news reporting.

The Age commented that the "ready availability of fire-extinguishers and official TV teams and the lack of verification about the victims" raised questions about whether authorities had advanced knowledge of the self-immolation. Police on Tiananmen Square were not known to carry firefighting equipment, and the nearest building would have been several minutes away. Yet police appeared on the scene of the self-immolation within 90 seconds carrying numerous pieces of firefighting equipment. A European journalist was quoted as saying "I have never seen policemen patrolling on Tiananmen Square carrying fire extinguishers. How come they all showed up today? The location of the incident is at least 20 minutes roundtrip from the nearest building — the People's Great Hall. If they were to have dashed over there to get the equipment, it would have been too late." John Gittings of The Guardian offered an alternative explanation, however, noting it was common practice in many countries for police camera operators to be on hand when a public disturbance is anticipated; the police used small-scale fire-extinguishers of the type carried in public vehicles, many of which are routinely on the square.