As more than a billion Chinese across the country welcomed the first day of the Year of the Monkey with food, gifts and family outings on Monday, a desperate member of a group of petitioners drank pesticide in an attempted suicide on Tiananmen Square, according to an eyewitness. "There was a group of people who arrived at about 1 p.m. who seemed to be from the same family," Hunan petitioner and eyewitness Huang Guangyu, told RFA on Monday. "One of them started to drink [pesticide] but the police stopped him." She added: "Of course if you drink pesticide on the first day of Chinese New Year, the police are going to step in and stop you. After that, he was taken away in an ambulance." Read more
