BEIJING (Reuters) - A 12-year-old Chinese girl who set herself on fire on Tiananmen Square in a group suicide attempt by alleged members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement has died in hospital, state television said on Sunday.
Liu Siying, the youngest of five people who took part in the self-immolation in January, died on Saturday of a congenital heart condition aggravated by severe internal burns, television quoted doctors as saying.
"We did everything we could to revive her heart but we failed," said a nurse in the burns unit at Jishuitan hospital in Beijing.
Doctors said Liu's external burns had almost healed and skin transplants had been successful but her internal organs, especially her heart, had swollen due to flames she inhaled.
China has highlighted the case of Liu in a nationwide media campaign to discredit Falun Gong and its U.S.-based leader Li Hongzhi. Official reports say she was persuaded by her mother to join the self-immolation.
Television has shown closeups of the daughter's face, charred beyond recognition as she lay on the square calling for her mother, who died on the day of the burnings.
It has also broadcast interviews with Liu, bandaged head to toe, tearfully explaining she had wanted to reach paradise and believed the flames would not hurt her.
"This is the perfection of Li Hongzhi," state television said on Sunday. "This is the paradise imagined by Liu Siying."
"The road to paradise is the road to death," it said. "The Chinese people must thoroughly settle the blood debts with Li Hongzhi and the Falun Gong cult."
It did not mention the three other burn victims.
Falun Gong spokesmen say they doubt the self-immolators were true believers as Falun Gong does not condone suicide.
They say Li preaches salvation from a corrupt world through meditation and the study of texts based loosely on Buddhism and Daoism.
But China says Falun Gong is an "evil cult" which cheats its members and has been responsible for the deaths of 1,660 people by suicide or refusing medical treatment.
China's 19-month battle with the spiritual group it banned in 1999 has sparked international concern about abuse of religious freedom and civil liberties.
Washington will sponsor a motion condemning Beijing's human rights record at the annual six-week session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights beginning on Monday in Geneva.
Since Falun Gong was banned, tens of thousands of followers have been detained for protesting in Tiananmen Square. Human rights groups say thousands of members are in labour camps and more than 100 have died of abuse in police custody.
China says it has arrested more than 150 Falun Gong protest organisers but authorities deny allegations of abuse, saying they treat ordinary followers with leniency.