DHARAMSHALA, October 29: Chinese censorship mechanism became busy on Monday as images of a burning car at the historic Tiananmen Square, the site of major protests against the Communist regime, went viral on Chinese social networking sites and online news portals.
An SUV crashed near the Tiananmen gate and caught fire killing five and injuring 38 others on Monday, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. The dead were the three occupants of the car and two tourists, a Philippine woman and a Chinese man.
The vehicle hit the guardrail of the Jinshui Bridge over the moat of the Forbidden City before it burst into flames, the state-run news agency reported. Following the incident, Chinese authorities immediately blocked all roads leading to the site and secured the area, reports said. A foreign tourist who was on the square was cited by Reuters that she heard an explosion followed by a fire.
Moreover, foreign journalists were stopped from visiting the site and images from their cameras removed. Chinese social networking sites were bombarded with posts reporting the fire at Tiananmen Square but were being quickly deleted off, with users speculating that the flames were the result of a self-immolation incident.
Chinese police were reportedly looking for two ethnic Uighur Muslims in connection with the incident. The north-western region has seen repeated outbreaks of violence, including vicious ethnic riots in 2009 that killed almost 200 in its capital, Urumqi, and at least two major fatal incidents this year.
Tiananmen Square has been one of China’s most politically sensitive locations since 4 June 1989, when People’s Liberation army soldiers fired on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds of people.
