BEIJING (AP) - A 19-year-old follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement set himself on fire on a city square in southern China and died the next day, state media reported.
Luo Guili died of severe burns on July 2 in Nanning, the capital of southern China's Guangxi region, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. It didn't report why authorities waited three weeks to announce his death.
China says at least four Falun Gong practitioners have killed themselves by self-immolation since the government outlawed the group two years ago. It says others have killed themselves by hanging themselves.
Falun Gong representatives question the government's claims, saying the group's teachings forbid suicide.
Xinhua said Luo started practicing Falun Gong in 1996 as a student at Guangxi's Light Industry School.
After meditating for a while on the square in Nanning on July 1, Luo pulled two plastic bottles of alcohol from a bag, doused himself and ignited it before guards and police could stop him, Xinhua said.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with a blend of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi.
Thousands of followers are in jails and labor camps and tens of thousands have been arrested and pressured to renounce the group in the government crackdown. Falun Gong says many followers have been tortured and that 250 have been killed.
The government banned Falun Gong as a threat to Communist Party rule and Chinese society.
On Monday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin arrived in Malta, where several Falun Gong members unfurled a banner near a war memorial he was visiting that said: ``Stop killing Falun Gong practitioners in China.''
AP-NY-07-24-01 0813EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.