The New York Times

Wednesday, February 16, 2000

China Reports a Suicide in Tiananmen

By ERIK ECKHOLM

BEIJING, Feb. 15 -- An explosion in Tiananmen Square this afternoon was set off by a suicidal farmer who was a psychiatric patient, according to the police and the New China News Agency.

The farmer died on the scene and a tourist from South Korea was slightly injured by the blast at about 4 p.m., the authorities said.

Apparently trying to head off speculation about the explosion in the politically symbolic square -- the site of recent demonstrations by members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement -- the authorities released information with unusual speed.

In a statement handed out to reporters within two hours of the blast, the police identified the dead man as Li Xiangshan, from Hubei Province in central China. The statement said that he deliberately set off the explosion to kill himself and that he was previously known to the authorities because he had come to Beijing four times before to make appeals to the country's leaders.

The man's motives were not specified, nor was his psychiatric history, and there was no way to verify the police description independently. An officer on the scene said the man was not a follower of Falun Gong.

The square was closed off as the police searched the site for debris. The blast did not cause a visible crater and the evening lowering of the national flag on the north end of the square, a popular attraction with Chinese tourists, continued as usual.

On one side of the vast square is the Great Hall of the People, where the national Parliament will convene next month. The square also holds the Mao Zedong mausoleum.

It is a tradition in China for people who feel they have been wronged to travel to Beijing to petition higher authorities or to gain attention for their grievances. And there are some precedents in which disaffected or mentally unstable people have exploded suicide bombs. But there have also been several unexplained bomb explosions around the country in the last two years.

In early 1997, bombs exploded in a shopping center and a bus in central Beijing, by some reports killing two people. The cases have not been solved, although security agencies reportedly blame Uighur separatists from the western region of Xinjiang.