A Chinese man set himself alight in Tiananmen Square last month, authorities said yesterday, the first such protest reported in the politically sensitive heart of the capital in more than a decade.
Police moved quickly to put out the fire and the 42-year-old man survived, the Beijing Public Security Bureau said in a statement, adding that he was protesting against the outcome of a civil lawsuit
A photograph on the Web site of Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper showed a man lying on the ground in the square, surrounded by police officers, under the portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
“At about 11am on Oct. 21, 2011, a man surnamed Wang approached the Jinshuiqiao and suddenly ignited the clothes he was wearing,” the statement said, referring to the section of the square where Mao’s portrait is hung.
“Police officers on the scene extinguished the fire in dozens of seconds and sent him to hospital,” the statement said.
There has been an escalation in self-immolations in China this year.
Nine Buddhist monks and two nuns have set themselves alight in ethnically Tibetan parts of Sichuan Province since the start of the year — a development rights groups say shows a growing desperation over what they call religious repression in the area.
Earlier this month an 81-year-old woman died after setting herself on fire as local officials tried to demolish her home.
However, there have been no confirmed reports of such protests in Tiananmen Square — the scene of a deadly 1989 crackdown on mass pro-democracy protests — since 2001.
Seven members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong tried to set themselves alight on the square on Jan. 23, 2001. Two were prevented from doing so by police and one woman died at the scene, previous reports have said.
At the time, Falun Gong denied the people were members of the group and accused the government of fabricating the story to discredit the movement.
China’s state-run media is heavily censored and did not cover the latest immolation until yesterday, when the Global Times newspaper published a brief report.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS