THREE MEN set themselves on fire in their car near a busy Beijing shopping precinct yesterday, after they arrived in the Chinese capital to voice what city police said were “personal grievances”.
They were in a grey car with non-Beijing licence plates and police officers stopped the car as they thought it looked suspicious. When police opened the door of the car, which had three Chinese flags on the roof, an incendiary device exploded. “When they were advancing to examine it, the inside of the car caught fire and it was swiftly extinguished. Based on initial inquiries, the three came to Beijing to voice personal grievances,” the Public Security Bureau said in a statement.
There was no indication whether the passengers were Tibetans, or Uighurs from the restive province of Xinjiang, two groups in China considered a security risk by authorities.
China’s annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, begins next week and this is a traditional time for petitioners to come to Beijing to air their grievances.
With the economy slowing down and millions of migrant workers forced to return to their rural homes as employment in the cities dries up, this year is expected to be a particularly busy time for petitioners. In recent years however, the police have kept petitioners from making their pleas and confined them to detention centres around the capital.
In 2001, five people, who the government said belonged to the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. In 2006, a man also set himself alight there to protest not being paid, and Western religious protesters were arrested there during the Beijing Olympics last summer.
Security is tight on the square at all times and any behaviour out of the ordinary is noticed quickly by plainclothes bureau officials.