Like many reporters, I rushed down to the Wangfujing pedestrian walkway in Beijing yesterday afternoon when word came out that three people had set their own car afire in what appeared to be self-immolation.
The event happened at about 2:50 p.m., according to the police.
I went with my assistant and got there at about 5:40 p.m. A knot of Japanese television reporters were on the scene, at the corner of Chang'an Boulevard, barely a few hundred meters from Tiananmen Square. I split with my assistant and we began asking people what they had seen. The scattering of bicycle lot attendants and other people with fixed jobs there virtually all said the same thing: “Saw nothing.” Clearly, they had been instructed not to speak.
The photos above and below are floating around the internet. They show the silver car with flags on top in which the three passengers rode before they set themselves afire. It looks like perhaps a body is lying behind the car. I can't tell for sure.
A police statement said that the three had come to Beijing as petitioners. That means that they had serious grievances and felt they could only get redress by coming to China’s capital.
It also made no mention of any death. It said two of the three were injured but neither was in life-threatening condition in the hospital.
A Hong Kong radio station said one of the people appears to be a Muslim Uyghur from the far west Xinjiang province. The ethnicity of the other two is not clear.
Self-immolation is a sign of fairly severe desperation. Frankly, I was a little surprised that the state Xinhua news agency would even carry a short item about this as sensitive as it is about China’s overseas image. Yet because of censorship, we may never know the full extent of the grievances of these three people.
The Beijing administration has indicated that they were trying to voice some grievance while making the attempt at self-immolation.
Posted by: bankcard empire | July 24, 2009 at 01:56 AM
Two men and one woman attempted to set themselves on fire in Beijing's Wangfujing shopping district on Wednesday in protest over an unspecified grievance.
Posted by: New York Mortgage Home Loan | July 14, 2009 at 06:19 AM
Has anyone ever seen a protest in China? Of course no one says anything. Chinese people are not fools.
Posted by: Matt | March 02, 2009 at 02:59 PM
There were many pepople set them on fire in US,but americans call them terrorists.
Posted by: s | February 26, 2009 at 08:22 PM
maybe they just don't want to talk to you, Tim, given the fuss last year about western media........
Posted by: aa | February 26, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Well, let me just say that between two of us we asked at least a dozen people. Probably eight of them might have just arrived on the scene and been oblivious to what had happened a few hours earlier. But at least three looked like they'd been there quite a while because of their jobs. It doesn't strike me as so curious given the number of plainclothes police in the area at the time. I'm not saying nobody who saw it spoke. I'm just saying that we approached a dozen or so, and could find no one who acknowledged seeing something and being willing to talk.
Posted by: Tim J | February 26, 2009 at 05:16 AM
All those people and they've all been instructed to say they saw nothing? I find it hard to believe not one single person talked if they really saw something.
Posted by: meh | February 25, 2009 at 11:32 PM
Petitioners self-immolated in their private car? It doesn't sound right. If they are not FLG members, it is going to be a very interesting story.
Posted by: jeff | February 25, 2009 at 11:09 PM
Oh I see, but it was reported as something like a traffic accident on the local TV station last night.
Posted by: LC | February 25, 2009 at 10:12 PM