A 25-year-old Falun Gong practitioner set himself ablaze at mid-day Friday in western Beijing, and by the time police arrived and put out the fire, he was already dead.

The public security bureaus of Beijing and central China's Hunan Province identified the man as Tan Yihui. Born in 1975, Tang was a shoe polisher and resided in No. 117 Jianmin Lane of Changde City in Hunan.

Tan said in a letter that he was here "to renounce his citizenship of the People's Republic of China" in order to be "a brave warrior" in defense of Li Hongzhi and his Falun Dafa, and return to "heaven."

A witness called the police at 12:06 pm when he spotted the man, soaked in gasoline, set himself on fire at Wanshoulu, a residential quarter near Chang'an boulevard in western Beijing.

The police arrived in 3 minutes, while the man was still on fire. The police were quick to put out the fire with extinguishers they had carried in the car.

A household registration cover was found near the corpse, containing an identity card, a train ticket from Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, to Beijing and a 6-page letter explaining why he set himself on fire.

The train ticket shows that Tan left Changsha at 13:43 pm Thursday.

The witness, named Chang Huaikang and in his 30s, recalled that he was in a telephone booth when he saw the man standing about five meters away.

"I had thought he was to dump waste water. But all of a sudden the man poured the liquid over his head, and I said to myself that this must a stupid guy taking a shower on such a cold day," the witness said.

"Then he took out a lighter and set himself on fire. I heard what sounded like an explosion," said the witness, who called the police right away.

Doctors said that Tan died of suffocation.

His neighbor said that Tan was a diligent junior middle school student, but failed to pass the high school entrance examination.

"He started practicing Falun Gong in 1997 and since then he hadn't talked much to his neighbors," Liu said.

Tan said in his letter that Li Hongzhi, the cult leader, encouraged Falun Gong followers "not to be afraid of dying in order to achieve 'nirvana'".

"We must be the first to sacrifice for the Falun Dafa," he said.

Passers-by interviewed by Xinhua at the site said that they were "shocked" by the incident and "infuriated" at Li Hongzhi who instigated the Falun Gong followers to commit suicide.