BEIJING, Feb. 8 -- Chinese police may seek homicide charges against foreign reporters who they claim had advance knowledge that five alleged members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group would planning to set themselves afire in Tiananmen Square last month, according to an article published in two state-run newspapers.
The story, which also appeared on Chinese Internet sites today, said that police would consider charging the reporters with "abetting and assisting other people in committing suicide" if they could prove the reporters were involved in planning the Jan. 23 incident. One woman died of her burns and the other four people, including the woman's 12-year-old daughter, were hospitalized in critical condition.
Articles in the Chinese press, particularly on sensitive subjects, are generally approved by several Communist Party officials before publication. The newspapers that published the story Wednesday -- the Yangcheng Evening News and the Southern Daily -- refused to comment, and a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry did not respond to questions faxed to him.
The article was seen as the latest salvo in the government's escalating campaign to discredit Falun Gong as a dangerous cult supported by "Western anti-China forces" and to win support for its 18-month effort to crush the group. Graphic footage of the self-immolations, including a shot of the girl -- crying out for her mother with her face charred black -- has been broadcast regularly on state television, stirring anger against the sect.
Falun Gong leaders insist that the five people could not have been members of their movement, which promotes a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and traditional Chinese breathing exercises.
Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed leader, meanwhile, described Falun Gong as a cult whose members must be closely monitored, the Associated Press reported from Hong Kong. "Anyone who has watched the self-immolation on Tiananmen Square would be very shocked," Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa said in a legislative question-and-answer session that sharply escalated the war of words over the group's activities in Hong Kong. China is trying to pressure Hong Kong to ban Falun Gong, which exists legally in the former British colony.
"I certainly hope that such incidents will not happen in Hong Kong, and I believe the people of Hong Kong share this view," Tung said.
The display of concern coincides with preparations in Beijing to host a delegation that will evaluate the city's bid for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Protests against China's human rights record helped doom the city's bid for the 2000 Games, but Chinese officials say the Falun Gong crackdown should not be used as an excuse to deny the country again.
"Cults exist in every country," said Liu Jingmin, deputy mayor of Beijing. "The way governments deal with them differs due to different laws, but resistance against cults is a common practice."
Liu said the U.S. government's 1993 attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., did not affect the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, and he added that the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, took place despite a poison gas attack on Tokyo subways in 1995 by the Aum Supreme Truth cult.
The newspaper reports said that surveillance videotapes showed six or seven reporters from CNN, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse arriving 10 minutes before the burnings began and positioning themselves near the victims. It also said the harrowing, close-up shots of the incident broadcast on China Central Television were taken from videotape confiscated from CNN -- addressing for the first time questions by overseas Falun Gong leaders about why the government happened to have a camera crew in place to film the incident.
CNN, the AP and AFP denied having advance knowledge of the incident. The AP and AFP said their reporters were not in the square at the time. Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, said a producer and cameraman witnessed the self-immolations because they were making a routine check of the square for Falun Gong protests on the day before the Chinese New Year, which was marked by protests a year ago.
He said the footage used in the Chinese television reports could not have come from CNN videotape because the CNN cameraman was arrested almost immediately after the incident began.