Original subtitles

LISA WEAVER: It was a very cold day.

There was snow on the Square,

and the snow had been shoveled up

and packed into these little pyramids.

We were wandering around, just keeping an eye out.

Myself and my cameraman,

each with a camera, but concealed.

And we heard from behind us

this whooshing sound.

[PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

I turned around and I could see some smoke

on the horizon, just a little trail.

I got my camera out

and got about 20 seconds,

25 seconds of shaky video.

Before any of us knew it

somebody was on him, a military policeman,

and he didn't resist.

I made a run for it.

I thought maybe I could get

to the other side of the square and outrun,

and, of course, I couldn't.

But it gave me a window of opportunity

to get a small tape

out of my camera and into my bra.

They ended up taking us through the scene.

I could clearly see three people,

um, on fire.

And it was absolutely the strangest thing I'd ever seen.

[FEMALE REPORTER TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

MALE REPORTER: China's Communist leaders today

escalated their campaign

against the popular spiritual movement

called Falun Gong.

They vowed to crush

what they say is a cult.

Members of China's Falun Gong religious group

attempted a fiery mass suicide

last week in Beijing.

This whole thing was a dramatic change in tactics for the sect

which has staged many non-violent protests.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

You know, first I was distrustful

of the whole thing that actually happened.

It burst out of nowhere.

FEMALE REPORTER: Just who they were is now in dispute.

The Chinese Government news agency

says they were Falun Gong followers.

But spokespeople for the movement

outside of China

say that can't be true

because a suicide protest

goes against Falun Gong principles.

[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]

MAN: I have some first-hand experience

with protests in Tiananmen Square.

[MAN SHOUTING IN MANDARIN]

That's me nearly 20 years ago,

protesting the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

FEMALE REPORTER: Jason Loftus watches more than 50 practitioners

of Falun Gong,

who have come to Queen's Park

to urge the government

to help stop China's persecution

of the ancient spiritual practice.

You know, the police there they treat the practitioners of Falun Gong

very brutally.

It's just too horrifying what's going on there.

I mean, good people are being killed every day.

JASON: So how does a small-town Canadian kid

get involved in a struggle

between the Chinese Government

and an eastern spiritual group

that was largely unknown in the West?

I trace it back to an RV trip

with my family in my early teens.

It was a long drive.

So I brought an old paperback that I found

that promised to cover the entire history of the world.

The brief summary of Buddhism caught my eye.

It said the Buddha had discovered

an alternative path to happiness.

Rather than satisfying every human desire

he found you could be happy

by removing longings and desires themselves.

That blew my mind.

So I read a ton of books

while working a local gas station after school,

from yogis, Sufis and self-help gurus,

all in search of how to transcend human desire.

Some of my friends couldn't relate.

But I was on a mission.

And then at 18,

I came across Falun Gong.

Also called Falun Dafa.

It was a series of slow-moving exercises

and a promise that I could reach fulfillment

by measuring each of my thoughts and actions

against three criteria:

Is it truthful?

Is it compassionate?

And is it tolerant?

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

When I took up Falun Gong in 1998,

millions in China were doing the same.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

At first, the Chinese Government

praised and endorsed the practice

but as Falun Gong's numbers swelled

the Communist Party's attitude toward it changed.

So you had a situation by the late 1990's

that Falun Gong was not only

the second most popular

spiritual or religious group

after Chinese Buddhism,

uh, but it was also,

going by those figures,

more popular than the Communist party.

You actually had a large number of people within the party

and the party apparatus who were practicing Falun Gong.

And given the spiritual

and ideological differences

between Falun Gong and Marxist-atheist thought,

a number of leaders in the Communist Party

felt that that really posed a problem.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

JASON: I didn't know anything about Chinese politics,

and they were saying that Falun Gong was an evil cult.

I questioned if there was something I'd missed

about Falun Gong and the people involved.

Had I unwittingly joined a cult?

But what I saw were people who seemed to be trying to better themselves

through meditation and spirituality.

[SPEAKING INAUDIBLY]

The Chinese Government seemed intent on wiping out Falun Gong entirely.

Adherents were being sent en masse

to forced labor camps

and to what were called reeducation facilities.

To inmates, these were known as brainwashing centers.

The Falun Gong practitioners held there

faced many counts of torture and abuse.

They were pressured

and forced to watch government propaganda

until they agreed to recant their beliefs.

One Chinese Government advisor

explained the strategy toThe Washington Post.

"Pure violence doesn't work," he said,

"The brainwashing was needed, but wasn't enough, either.

He said, "None of it would be working

"if the propaganda hadn't started to change the way

"the general public thinks."

I wanted to help clear the air

and provide a voice to those who were suffering.

So I spoke up, meeting with media and government where I lived.

Then the self-immolation happened.

It was horrific.

Innocent lives lost, others destroyed.

I couldn't explain it.

It was alien to everything I knew about Falun Gong.

[LAUGHING, TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

Time passed,

and the event faded from the public consciousness in the West.

And I was fine with that.

I was tired of worrying whether people might think

I was going to set myself on fire

just because I did Falun Gong.

But then I met a man whose story would lead me to face

the self-immolation event again.

[CHEN RUICHANG SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[MAN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: Chen Ruichang worked high up

in one of China's largest state television networks.

He was responsible for research

into making government propaganda more persuasive.

And Chen took up Falun Gong like I did in 1998

amidst its boom and popularity

and favorable coverage in China.

But when the persecution began,

and the state media that employed Chen turned on Falun Gong,

pressure mounted.

[CHEN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: Days before

the self-immolation would take place

Chen was arrested at his workplace

and taken to a special reeducation facility

specifically for staff of the state media and government.

There he describes a prolonged campaign

to force him to abandon Falun Gong

and to have him accept the Chinese state's narrative

on the self-immolation.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[MAN SPEAKING MANDARIN INDISTINCTLY ON TV]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[HIGH-PITCHED RINGING]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[FEMALE REPORTER SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: Chen made me see

that for practitioners of Falun Gong in China,

the self-immolation never really passed into the rearview mirror.

It wasn't a scar so much as an open wound

and they were dealing with the consequences of it every day.

SARAH: Even today,

the self-immolation incident

shapes the way many Chinese people think about Falun Gong.

You had wall-to-wall coverage

of very graphic, emotional footage.

[IN MANDARIN]

JASON: The self-immolation

became part of the school curriculum

And then, in so-called anti-cult rallies

organized by the government,

it became evidence, that Falun Gong was the enemy next door

that needed to be wiped out.

[CHEN SPEAKING IN MANDARIN]

JASON: I felt compelled to revisit

the self-immolation,

and to investigate Chen's claim that it had been staged.

According to Chinese state media,

on January 23, 2001,

seven people attempted to set themselves on fire

in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

to reach an afterlife paradise.

[NEWS ANCHOR SPEAKING IN MANDARIN]

JASON: It was said that each planned

to conceal two bottles of gasoline

beneath their clothes

and use razor blades to cut holes

allowing the fuel to soak in,

before setting themselves alight.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: They had agreed to take action together

at 2:30 p.m.,

and were equipped with watches.

However, that's not how things played out.

This woman tells state TV

she drank 20 ounces of gasoline

and poured the remainder on her clothes.

This cop says he saw the woman

drinking from a Sprite bottle

and that set him into action.

Shortly after, police on the Square

said they saw a man on fire.

White smoke is shown emanating

from behind a security vehicle.

After the smoke had cleared,

someone filmed the seated man shouting a slogan.

[MAN SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

Then, security camera footage

shown in the state media broadcast

shows four figures on fire.

They are identified in the program

as two sets of mothers and daughters.

Nineteen minutes after the agreed 2:30 time,

this man, the seventh participant,

has not acted.

Police say they spot him

pouring gasoline on his clothes,

and stop him

before he can set himself alight.

[INAUDIBLE]

One woman, Liu Chunling

reportedly dies on-site.

The other six survive

and give interviews with state-run media,

some from their hospital beds.

If the event was not as the Chinese Government had claimed,

I figured a good place to start

would be speaking with those who were closest.

My team and I reached out to journalists

who were stationed in Beijing

at the time of the self-immolation.

But we had trouble finding people willing to speak with us.

[MAN ON PHONE SPEAKING]

Some spoke on background

and some declined,

citing ongoing work in China.

But looking through the initial coverage

on the self-immolation

I see several reports quoting a CNN journalist

named Lisa Weaver

and she appears to have witnessed the burning directly.

We really went to see just to check it out, um,

and we were simply in the right time at the right place,

stayed a little longer got a little colder.

[INDISTINCT CLAMORING]

They ended up taking us through the scene

in order to get to the bus.

So we crossed the center of the Square...

Once we were put on the bus,

no one was preventing us watching this,

which really surprised me.

We were questioned on the bus

by a couple of different policemen.

They were just very interested

in what I'd seen, when I'd seen it.

"Do you have a tape? Are you hiding a tape?"

And I said, "No, I'm not hiding a tape."

At one point,

the person who was talking to me, uh, left,

and came back with a very brief, written account

that looked to me to be like

a Xinhua News Agency copy.

Four people immolated themselves

earlier this afternoon on Tiananmen Square

and, you know, just the facts.

JASON: Xinhua was quoted widely in the reports.

Apparently the news release

that Lisa had initially reviewed and confirmed.

And I see other details attributed to Lisa, herself.

She's said to have witnessed

the seated man on fire

as police put his flames out.

She's also said to have seen the four women ablaze,

to have witnessed them douse themselves in gasoline.

And then, after setting themselves alight,

hold their arms up in a Falun Gong pose.

But when we spoke with her,

Lisa didn't claim to have seen these details.

JASON: You said that you saw three people,

three people self-immolating in total?

Is that right, or...

I saw three people in total,

not really at the same time.

[STAMMERING] I... The first one I saw

was one. I got some footage of that.

Then tried to run away... Run away with the tape,

was caught, apprehended, brought back.

It wasn't until I was a lot... Brought closer

to the center of the square and the bus

that they put us on

that I saw, um,

three people,

two of whom were in flames,

and one of whom wasn't.

He was already... Already seated.

JASON: Did you know...

Would you be able to say if they were men, women, children?

No.

The only person who I could identify as a man

was Wang Jindong,

as he was sitting there, the flames out,

you know, his clothes were smoking.

The other two were just too far away.

My recollection as to whether these people

were Falun Gong practitioners,

I would say, at first glance,

yes, because they were yelling the slogans,

and, uh, you know, doing those gestures

that Falun Gong members do.

It was clear to me, personally,

that they couldn't have been very representative.

JASON: After our interviews with Chen and Lisa,

my wife heard from her family members in China.

The Public Security Bureau had contacted them

saying they knew what we were up to overseas.

No details on what we'd done wrong, no explicit threat.

Perhaps a warning or hint to make us worry

what they might know and what they might do.

So my wife deleted her Chinese social media accounts

used to contact family,

in an effort to shield them from any further pressure.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: I see this claim

that CNN was behind the footage

repeated in the Chinese press.

And I look at the man Chen says came to meet with him,

Li Dongsheng.

As Chen described,

Li was the vice president at China Central Television.

But there's more about him that catches my eye.

According to articles in the state run press,

Li oversaw China Central Television's

flagship news magazine programFocus Report...

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: ...the program that produced

the expose on self-immolation,

and many of the follow-ups.

But Li wasn't only a propaganda and censorship official.

He had another role central to the party's campaign against Falun Gong.

When the Communist Party launched its crackdown

on Falun Gong in 1999,

Li had been named the first deputy director

of something called the 610 Office.

When the decision was made to persecute Falun Gong

the 610 Office was created.

A special, extra-legal party mechanism

and essentially a secret police force.

It really pulls the strings behind the scenes.

Judges, legal apparatus, prisons to labor camps,

to elements of the media

and guiding the propaganda campaign

with regards to Falun Gong.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[IN MANDARIN]

JASON: Chinese media had claimed the closeup footage

was shot by CNN journalists.

But we obtained a copy of the footage

Lisa smuggled out of the Square in her clothing

and it seems she and her cameraman

were filming far from the action.

The assertion that we had

any footage other than the smoke on the horizon

from my camera

was just really ridiculous.

They had plenty of people taking video.

JASON: In the footage shown in state media

we can see what looked like security personnel holding cameras.

In the top left of the screen,

a figure appears to be filming.

He enters running

then slows to a walk.

He seems to be steadying his shot

just as an experienced videographer might.

I can see what looks like a camera bag

slung over his left shoulder.

But the security personnel rushed past him

without seizing his equipment.

LISA: It was a very fluid,

fast-moving situation.

A pro would probably be shooting

the way that they were shooting.

Some of those really closeup shots

of the people burning themselves,

in particular, the fellow who was sitting

cross-legged on the ground.

Those tight shots

definitely came from security personnel,

because I saw them take those images

and there's no way it could've been us

as the state media later asserted

because we were being escorted to the bus.

JASON: This individual is facing the seated man

who was said to have set himself on fire,

and he appears to be holding a camera.

Was this the man who Lisa described?

Did he wait for the smoke to clear

and then shoot the footage of the seated man?

[INAUDIBLE]

[PEOPLE TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

JASON: While examining this scene, we notice something else.

An officer places a blanket over the seated man's mouth.

But we can hear his voice very clearly.

[PEOPLE TALKING IN MANDARIN]

And the recording is free of environmental sounds like wind and ambulance sirens.

Unlike in this interview with a police officer

describing the event into a nearby microphone.

- [SPEAKING MANDARIN] - [WIND GUSTING]

[RECORDING STOPS]

It seems the audio could have been recorded separately

and dubbed to the footage.

Then presented as evidence that the immolation

was inspired by a belief in Falun Gong.

[MAN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

JASON: In a follow-up

CCTV'sFocus Report

then visits the home of Liu Baorong,

the woman who claimed to drink gasoline.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

It just doesn't match up with a Falun Gong practitioner,

let alone a dedicated Falun Gong practitioner,

which is what the Chinese Government was trying to paint her as.

JASON: Levi Browde volunteers for the Falun Info Centre

which tracks the Human Rights situation

of Falun Gong in China.

He was at the other end of the banner I held

in Tiananmen Square in 2002.

You're talking about individuals

who, apparently, were so fanatic,

but they are suddenly

saying exactly what the Chinese Government

would want them to say.

"I did this crazy thing because of Falun Gong,

"and now the government is going to save me.

"And I'm so glad they're here to save me."

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

LEVI: And there was no sense of protest.

There was no statement from them

of the grievances they have for the Chinese Government

for torturing them, putting them in prison.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: As someone who had protested for Falun Gong

in Tiananmen Square myself,

this is one of the first things that struck me.

The lack of any complaint

about the Chinese regime's ongoing persecution.

It was the reason behind every other Falun Gong protest

but here it was missing completely.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: The footage seems to show the seated man

failing to perform the hand gesture

that begins every Falun Gong exercise called Jieyin.

In Jieyin, the thumb tips are touched lightly together.

But the man appears to be overlapping his thumbs.

He also didn't correctly cross his legs.

In Falun Gong seated meditation,

the two legs are folded on top of each other

in what's called the lotus position.

Beginners can fold one leg up

in what's called half-lotus.

But this man folds nether leg up.

It's like someone claiming to have dedicated their life to yoga

but being unfamiliar with a basic position like downward dog.

He was sitting in a manner

that is not how Falun Gong sit in meditation,

was saying things that no Falun Gong would say.

[MAN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

LEVI: And there's a policeman standing next to him...

holding a fire blanket,

doing nothing, just holding it there

until this man says something.

And then the policeman puts the blanket on to this man.

JASON: On the surface, we see a man said to have been on fire

now shouting a slogan, and an officer

covering him with a fire blanket.

But the rescue effort appears to be on hold.

The officer's not in a rush to cover the man,

or hurry him into an ambulance.

And he appears to be facing the direction of the camera

that is shooting the scene

rather than the man who was supposedly on fire.

Is he waiting for a cue?

It's a stark contrast to the police response

to every other Falun Gong protest I'd seen on Tiananmen Square,

where we see officers rushing

to prevent the participants' messages

from being heard or seen.

As to, you know, sort of the deeper question

of whether or not these were Falun Gong members...

We didn't have time for that, at the time.

Also, by this stage, uh,

CNN was an accomplice to murder,

according to the Chinese Communist Party.

Because the state-run media test-floated that headline

in a Hong Kong newspaper

as it happens, during a big conference

with a lot of CNN head honchos in Hong Kong.

JASON: I see no evidence that Lisa was involved in the immolations.

This accusation floated in Chinese press

seems instead like it could be a scare tactic,

an attempt to deter Lisa

and CNN from pursuing the story.

CNN was taking that allegation very seriously.

Not that they believed it but, you know,

they were taking the reality seriously

that maybe the bureau would be closed down,

maybe we'd all be kicked out of China

and CNN would have no presence.

CNN had told us to not even talk to the other reporters.

I mean, I had my friends and my colleagues

who worked at other news organizations calling.

But we were really under orders

to be very quiet about the whole thing.

It's unlikely that their true identities

will ever be independently confirmed.

[INAUDIBLE]

DAVID SATTER: Foreign correspondents

work for news organizations

that have a very different agenda

than the one that is required,

if you are to carry out a major investigation.

JASON: Writing for The Financial Times,

David Satter's efforts to investigate a government conspiracy

led him to become the first American journalist expelled from Russia

since the Cold War.

News organizations usually are seeking

to have a stream of coverage from a country

over a period of time

and across a wide variety of subjects.

There's a big investment in terms of bureau equipment,

staff, resources,

all of which can be put in jeopardy

by pursuing a story which seems implausible

and which is fiercely resisted by the authorities.

JASON: But one foreign correspondent

continued to pursue the self-immolation story.

In an article entitled Human Fire Ignites Chinese Mystery,

Washington Post journalist Philip Pan

reported unusual findings from the hometown

of the alleged immolators, Kaifeng city.

Pan visits the home of Miss Liu Chunling,

the woman who died on the square

and the mother of the 12-year-old girl.

But a man at the door sends him away

and directs him to the government for any questions.

Miss Lui's neighbors say they were not just surprised

by what she was said to have done

they were caught off-guard

by the claim that she had taken up Falun Gong at all.

None had ever seen her practice.

"I'm not saying I don't believe the government,

"but I'm not saying I believe it, either,"

said one local woman who was interviewed.

"The government controls the news.

"We all know that now."

WOMAN: [OVER PHONE] I'm really sorry about that,

but this is something that I have to tell you,

and I have to like do it.

JASON: "To do" what?

WOMAN: To terminate the contract.

JASON: My company makes video games.

And our latest title was being published by Tencent,

one of China's largest media companies.

The release of the game was taking place

just in the midst of my work on this film.

WOMAN: [ON PHONE] They just say we have to terminate

any business relationship with Lofty Sky.

So this is not about the game,

it's about the company.

You mean like the censorship office that reviewed the game?

There's someone in the government

who told you to cancel a contract?

JASON: Our game was pulled from storefronts in China.

And a Chinese mobile deal was killed as well.

WOMAN: I really want you to find out what happened in your company.

Maybe there are staff in the company,

or, I don't know, maybe your business partners that is not working

in the direction aligned with the government direction.

I don't know. I can't really tell anything.

JASON: Considering the participants I've examined so far

I start to form a theory...

One man who doesn't seem to know Falun Gong.

A woman whose neighbors suggest never practiced.

And another woman who was never on fire

but co-operatively relays her plans to the government

and praises the authorities.

It all seems to point to one thing...

That they were actors and it was all a stunt.

The important part is insulating the body

from the heat of the fire.

So we use these high-tech fabrics as undergarments

and different layers, like base layers,

kinda like when you're climbing a mountain in winter

you use different layers to keep yourself from getting cold.

I'm using different layers in a different way

to keep myself from getting too warm.

JASON: Tom Comet is known as Danger Boy,

and he's been setting himself on fire in stunts for years.

Tom finds it plausible that the seated man

may have been layered up for a fire stunt.

TOM: One of the things you see in this

is what this guy is wearing.

It's sort of natural fibers, bigger, cloaky-type garments.

JASON: But he can't say the same

about the women shown on fire

or the little girl shown in close ups.

TOM: That was a very legitimate

third-degree, deep-tissue burn.

Like, I know, that skin is the outer layers of skin

and they will literally peel off.

Like you can just peel those off like layers of, you know, whatever.

This is all looking fairly legitimately like a burn.

That person is in a terrible state.

Oof!

Oh!

JASON: Tom finds the footage

of the mother and daughter on the square in the aftermath,

and of the four burning figures very convincing.

He's right that the flames engulfing the figures are enormous

and the human cost of that would seem to be real, not an act.

[CHEN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING IN MANDARIN]

[CHEN CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE]

[CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SNIFFLES]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[LIANG CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

JASON: It's remarkable to me

that Chen wouldn't bend in the face of all this,

with all this pressure, the threats and brainwashing.

How wasn't Chen swayed

that he wouldn't go along with what the party wanted him to say,

at least on the surface?

[MAN SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

[CHEN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

RICHARD CHEN: What information we can get is from Minghui net.

And then, we always try to see, uh...

I don't want to see my brother's name in there be killed.

I don't want to see my brother's name is missing.

But... one day...

we see it.

He's missing.

When he's being transferred from the brainwash class

to an actual labor camp,

um, it's a big worry about his safety.

We know how bad it is.

Like, people being tortured to death.

You cannot even like imagine what they're gonna do.

We do whatever we could,

talk to the government officials

and telling the media that we believe

to expose this is the only way to keep him safe.

At the time this incident occurred

there were probably 50,000 practitioners of Falun Gong

in Chinese jails

or propaganda camps, so to speak.

And the issue had been raised

by non-governmental organizations

and some governments at the United Nations Human Rights forums.

China really needed

to have the international community

against Falun Gong.

[TRUMPETING]

JASON: The timing of the self-immolation

was very fortuitous for the Communist Party.

And it's not just that Beijing

had been attempting to root out Falun Gong.

The foreign media's attention to the on-going crackdown

was standing in the way

of the Chinese regime's immediate political goals.

A year before the self-immolations,

uh, the Falun Gong, they gathered on Tiananmen Square,

New Year's Eve for the Chinese.

And they threw pamphlets into the air

and shouted, "Falun Gong is great!"

And had some banners.

[INDISTINCT CLAMORING]

JASON: Chinese New Year's Eve in Tiananmen Square

had been the site of a peaceful Falun Gong protest.

It was harshly repressed by Beijing

and captured by the western press.

We were able to film it from inside the car.

The police were on to us,

and what ensued was a high-speed chase.

We had the cops behind. I floored it.

[SIRENS WAILING]

So, we got this footage. We got it on the air.

FEMALE REPORTER: U.S. officials say one of the key items

on President Clinton's agenda

when he meets with Chinese President Jiang Zemin

later this week

will be China's deteriorating record

of religious tolerance.

At that time China was trying to emerge onto the world stage.

When you have pictures on a daily basis

of ordinary citizens being beaten up on Tiananmen Square,

that really undermines the Chinese Government's efforts

to display itself as a modern government,

as a rising, peaceful power,

and as one that is worthy of getting access

to international institutions or awards

like the Beijing Olympics.

MALE NEWS ANCHOR: Whatever happened at the labor camp,

the timing could not have been worse for China.

This country is obsessed with the Olympics.

One thing that could jeopardize Beijing's bid

is China's Human Rights record.

JASON: Beijing had lost out to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics.

In part, because of concerns over its Human Rights record.

For the 2008 games,

the ILC's evaluation committee

was due to arrive in Beijing in February, 2001,

less than a month after the self-immolation occurred.

The self-immolation managed to completely flip the narrative on Falun Gong.

Within two weeks of the incident,

an ILC executive announced

that Falun Gong would not stand in the way of Beijing's Olympic bid.

They likened the group to the violent cult in Waco, Texas,

that had not prevented the U.S.

from hosting the Olympics in Atlanta

and landing another in Salt Lake City.

In July, 2001,

Beijing was granted the 2008 Olympic Games.

In December of that year,

China was made a member of the WTO.

Self-immolation had enormous political consequences,

shifting the Falun Gong matter

from human rights concern

to internal political issue.

If you look at how the campaign against Falun Gong was going,

uh, the self-immolation was really kind of a gift to the Communist Party.

It gave them the perfect opportunity

to turn public opinion against Falun Gong,

to get international media to maybe also question

whether this group was worthy

of the kind of reporting that it was receiving.

The idea of this self-immolation

was to demonstrate, you know, that Falun Gong

was encouraging this practice,

even if they weren't, to make it appear as if they were.

And this is what was bought.

I mean, we have had self-immolations

in Vietnam, for example, before the Vietnam War got underway.

[MALCOLM BROWN SPEAKING]

DAVID HALBERSTAM: It hit the headlines all over the world.

It had enormous political consequences,

uh, outside of Vietnam and inside of Vietnam.

...city under attack.

JASON: President Kennedy, at the time

called the image, "The most impactful news photo in history".

It caused the populous to change sympathies nearly overnight.

And for the U.S. to cut allegiances

with the Vietnamese president,

who was blamed for the monk's sacrifice.

Instead, the Americans backed a coup

that would see the Vietnamese president ousted months later

and executed.

The photographer behind the photo,

the AP's Malcolm Brown,

said... [JASON READING]

The image was used as a form of propaganda

against the U.S. and its anti-Communist allies

in Vietnam.

I find a reference to another self-immolation

and this one takes place right in Beijing's Tiananmen Square,

but it's not a real-life event.

It comes from a work of fiction

that was written a full decade

before the self-immolation incident.

Author Wang Lixiong's political novel, Yellow Peril,

was known to the censorship authorities in China.

They had banned his book and put Wang under house arrest.

The novel lays out an eerie blueprint

for how communist officials would incite chaos

and justify the ongoing repression of a targeted group

by staging a self-immolation in their name.

The novel was published shortly after the dramatic demonstrations

for democracy in 1989 in Beijing.

And in the book,

the party is concerned with growing public sympathy

for the democracy activists' cause.

In this passage, one official hatches a plan

to turn the tide of public perception.

"How to set the trap?" it reads...

[JASON READING]

The book describes many automatic cameras

being set up in Tiananmen Square.

They were connected to a control center.

"The Minister of Public Security

"was awaiting the arrival of the foreign press," it said.

The participant who would die in the plot was a young woman.

And just as with the seated man,

there was a clear way to identify the group to be blamed for the action.

"The deal was that she had to yell some slogans", it said.

And then the similarities become so striking

that the novel can be mistaken for a telling

of the real-life self-immolation

ten years later in 2001.

[JASON READING]

She was wearing several layers of clothes

to ensure that the gasoline would be fully absorbed.

A female foreign reporter arrives on the scene

and the Minister of Public Security gives the cue.

"The girl became a fireball," the book said.

[JASON READING]

The woman finally falls to the ground

right at the foot of the People's Heroes Monument

in the center of Tiananmen Square.

That's precisely where Liu Chenling

is said to have fallen to her death

from self-immolation in 2001.

"Her body shrank to a sizzling charcoal", it read.

According toYellow Peril...

[JASON READING]

Even calling on the government...

[JASON READING]

It reads like a screenplay.

But a question remains...

What would have motivated the woman to participate?

InYellow Peril, they found a terminally-ill woman

and offered to pay her family 3,000,000 Chinese Yuan.

So I start looking for clues with Miss Liu Chunling,

the woman who died in the fire.

The Washington Post interviews with her neighbors

describe a woman who led a troubled life

and suffered psychological problems.

She was abusive to both her mother and daughter.

They say she worked in a nightclub

and took money to keep men company.

I keep looking for clues in Kaifeng City,

the hometown of Miss Liu and the other immolators.

And I find an article written within months

of the self-immolation incident in 2001.

The government in Kaifeng

had been building blood banks

and offering residents money

in exchange for their plasma

which officials sought to sell overseas for profit.

But when tainted equipment is used

and AIDS spreads widely,

the government suppresses the news

to the extent that the local peasants know HIV

only as the "strange illness" or "nameless fever."

To be clear, there's nothing specific

to connects Miss Liu to an AIDS epidemic,

but that's not what intrigues me.

It's that the government in Kaifeng

was luring residents with money and a promise,

and then casting them aside when things went wrong.

I go back to something I read inYellow Peril...

In the book's self-immolation scheme,

the Minister of Public Security

had also made a promise to the woman

to convince her to set herself on fire.

He promised she'd be given anesthetics

so she wouldn't feel pain.

But after her frantic death, he's asked,

"Didn't you give her the drugs?"

"That was just to console her..." the book read...

[JASON READING]

And it hits me.

What if Miss Liu was promised something else?

Perhaps something dangerous but not deadly.

What if she didn't sign up to die?

[BUTTON CLICKS]

[INDISTINCT CLAMORING]

When we slow the footage down,

the woman appears to have been struck.

A bent-shaped object is seen flying into the air from where she is hit.

As the camera pans back,

we see a man who seems to be standing

in the same place the woman was

just a few seconds before.

The hairline and collar of this figure

appear to match a man seen earlier in the footage.

As he enters the shot,

he seems to be pointing and directing the other officers.

Was he in command?

Could he have struck Miss Liu?

The important thing that people need to understand

about authoritarian and totalitarian systems

is that the individual human being

in these systems has very little value.

And they are not averse to killing people for no reason whatsoever

except to further their political goals,

including killing their own people.

[CHEN SPEAKING IN MANDARIN]

There's no way to confirm if Liu Chunling

was indeed tricked into participating

as the woman died on-site.

But her daughter survived and was rushed to hospital.

She is featured prominently in the reports that follow,

but only state media was able to speak with her.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

I don't know that any foreign journalist

could have got access

to the victims who were in hospital.

And I remember being surprised

the doctors let the Chinese journalists in,

because they have these horrible burns

and, you know, there's risk of infection

and, you know, to say nothing of the trauma

and what purpose are you serving...

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[LIU SIYING SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: The nurse interviews the little girl for the television cameras.

Meanwhile, the doctor said she needed an immediate tracheostomy

inserting a tube into her throat to allow breathing.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

It's unusual to see somebody speaking

with a tracheostomy in place

shortly after the injury.

They would not be able to generate the force required

through the mouth to form words.

So, I think it is fairly unlikely

that somebody, shortly after their injury,

would be speaking normally

unless the tracheostomy wasn't required in the first place.

My name is Dr. Alan Rogers.

I'm a plastic and reconstructive surgeon

with an interest and fellowship training in burn surgery.

I also manage complex wounds.

We are very vigilant about infection, prevention, and control.

Several questions arise in my mind

as to, firstly, the management

of burn injuries at the setting.

And then, secondly, whether in fact this was staged.

JASON: Dr. Rogers finds several things unusual here.

All four surviving immolators

are kept together in a single room.

The nurse and reporter are not wearing gloves

and next to the badly burnt little girl

we see a fuzzy teddy bear.

He's also suspicious of how certain wounds are dressed.

DR. ROGERS: This image is a little bit unusual,

given the very thick nature of the dressing at the wrist

with no dressing on the arm or hand.

Perhaps that bulky structure around the wrist

is in fact concealing the patient's hand

and that what appears to be a very deep, mummified hand

is in fact a very effective prop

because I cannot see the purpose of that bulky structure.

The little girl is said to be recovering well and nearing release.

But then she, too, suddenly dies.

It's reported to be a heart attack.

[CHEN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: I can't prove Chen's claim

that it was all designed this way for an effect.

But its impact is undeniable.

I felt it myself when I first heard the news

and I still feel it today.

Such a deeply-disturbing reversal of the mother archetype.

The one who is supposed to nurture and love and care for

instead leading her child to a violent death.

And tied together with it,

the accusation that this horror

was somehow connected to Falun Gong.

And that accusation itself

was enough to frame the discourse.

Even those who distrusted the government

and sought to question what they were being told,

did so from within the influence of the state narrative.

"Could Falun Gong have done this?"

"Why would Falun Gong lead people to burn themselves?"

Once you ask those questions,

you've already begun to unwittingly operate

from within the party's narrative.

People see things that are presented on their television screen

and they try to parcel out

what they can believe and they shouldn't believe.

But this effort has the pernicious effect

of drawing them in

and, in fact, indoctrinates them only further.

JASON: I see now that the self-immolation

didn't need to be irrefutable.

It simply needed to muddy the waters on Falun Gong.

LEVI: After the self-immolation and the media blitz,

suddenly there's a question.

"Are these people the kind of people

"that would light themselves on fire to go to heaven?"

No matter how objective you are

as a Human Rights worker,

at some point it comes down to what you feel.

There was something in the air

anytime you met with these people

about...

The enthusiasm was down.

The immolation event

eventually changed my thoughts.

In part, because, you know, the obvious point,

if these were Falun Gong practitioners,

and if they had been directed,

which the Falun Gong outside of China denied,

uh, but if they had,

this organization was really willing

to let people burn themselves alive

to make a political point.

Which is ironic,

because it plays right into the Chinese Communist Party narrative

of what the problem is.

JASON: Lisa presumed it was Falun Gong contacts

directing the participants.

But the Chinese press and the participants themselves,

in full confession mode,

make no claims of any Falun Gong contacts

directing them.

Instead, they offer a more unusual explanation

for the origin of their plan.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: Liu Yunfang,

the seventh participant in the self-immolation

appears in a government-organized press conference.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: It seems designed to showcase the harmful delusions

of what are purported to be Falun Gong followers:

Following dreams to commit acts of violence,

believing oneself to be the incarnation

of Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi,

is man who is still alive and living in New York.

I'd seen nothing like this anywhere in Falun Gong.

But buried inside this narrative

was an admission

that the idea for self-immolation

came from this man, Liu Yunfang.

Liu Yunfang says he lured other to join him

on the basis of his visions.

The state was holding all of Falun Gong culpable

for this one man's alleged dream.

It gets stranger.

The dream shares a very specific detail

with the immolation plot in the book, Yellow Peril.

In both, the immolator wears a special auto-ignition device

that's planted in their clothes

and is used to set them alight.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: Yellow Peril reads...

[JASON READING]

In my review of examples of self-immolation,

I hadn't found any others that mentioned using an auto-ignition device

which sounds like a very elaborate piece of technology

if your plan was to set yourself on fire.

It appears once in this banned work of fiction

about a state conspiracy to frame a repressed group,

and then again in Liu Yunfang's dream.

A dream that would also become the justification

for a continued repression of millions.

And this from the man who didn't manage to ignite his own fire

nearly 20 minutes after the group's agreed time.

[LIANG SPEAKING IN MANDARIN]

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

[CONTINUES SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[CHEN SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SIGHS]

[MEN GRUNTING]

[CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

- [MEN TALKING INDISTINCTLY] - [MAN WHIMPERING]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

CELIA OU: We talked to our local government

which is the City of Port Jervis.

[LIANG SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]

INTERVIEWER: I mean, how does it feel

looking back on these articles

and what you've achieved?

It's sad.

No, I think that, you know, that shows that

it's true

that the evil is very afraid of being exposed.

And, um...

And that's what we do.

And that works.

Several months after the event, I was in Geneva.

I was shown a video

debunking the Chinese claims.

MAN ON VIDEO: How is it possible that a plastic bottle

filled with gasoline

encompassed by a burning man's legs

remains in perfect condition?

I thought the Chinese version of the events was just...

for want of a better term, unbelievable.

It just didn't add up at all.

And we made comments and statements

in the Human Rights Council Session

condemning the Chinese Government's version of the events.

China harassed us.

They tried to play little games.

They would sort of hover and pace

and make comments, etc.

They expected to be threatening and intimidating.

And some NGOs are intimidated by it

but I'm not, particularly.

But China is such a major power.

We have been unable to get a single resolution

on China, condemning China for anything.

That would require ultimately

going to the Security Council,

and China has a veto.

It doesn't mean that people agree with China.

But it also means that people know

they cannot get anything with teeth

against China.

[PHONE RINGING]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

RICHARD: Finally when I know, I said, "Okay, great.

"Get out of there quick.

"As soon as possible.

"Forget your property, forget your money, just get out,

"because in there, you are a piece of meat..."

[CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

[IN ENGLISH] They can kill you.

The knife is in their hand. They can kill you anytime.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

JASON: In December, 2013,

the Communist Party puts Li Dongsheng under investigation

for unrelated charges of bribery and abuses of power.

It's part of what is said to have been a power struggle

between factions at high levels of the Communist Party.

Li is removed from his post

which then include Vice Minister of Public Security,

and Head of the Central 610 Office

for handling Falun Gong.

In January 2016,

he is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]

KAREN: Say we work and work and work on a certain issue

and it looks like there's an impasse,

and then something will happen

that completely changes the dynamic.

And, for instance, Nelson Mandela was freed.

The USSR fell apart.

The Berlin Wall came down.

- I mean, these... - [INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

There are little hints that something might happen.

But...

sometimes there's a sea change overnight.

And those sea changes are inspirational, actually.

MAN: Okay.

- Ready? - Chen, 14.

JASON: I had hoped to find all the answers

of what happened in Tiananmen Square that day.

But I don't think that's possible.

The clues and the circumstantial evidence

suggest a government conspiracy

to frame Falun Gong.

But there also isn't a smoking gun.

And considering the environment in mainland China,

it seems unlikely that one will ever emerge.

Just being a foreign journalist

covering the facts as you see them in China,

was hard enough with this story.

You know, we weren't even gonna look at the competing theories.

JASON: There were times I was frustrated

that the foreign press hadn't dug deeper

to uncover the inconsistencies in this story

that were hiding in plain sight.

But Lisa had also taken risks

to cover Falun Gong protests before,

and she'd smuggled her footage

out of Tiananmen Square.

Given that she'd gone looking

for another Falun Gong protest that day,

I'm not surprised she viewed it in that light.

And as questions did emerge about the state narrative,

Lisa and CNN were quickly off the story.

That photographer behind the burning monk photo, Malcolm Brown,

had written something once.

He described seeing a newspaper image

of an elephant on water skis

passing under the Brooklyn Bridge.

An ad for toothpaste was printed on the side of the elephant.

He said... [READING]

It's difficult to imagine a world in which a government

could devise a self-immolation scheme

to frame a religious group.

But it was also difficult to imagine soldiers opening fire

on unarmed students

who were appealing for democracy.

Twelve years after the 1989 massacre in Beijing,

as China was ascending on the international stage,

it was more concerned about its global standing.

It's conceivable that party leaders

would have felt a bold character assassination

was a smaller risk than the continued visible bloodshed.

DANNY: If you'd been arguing

that Falun Gong is encouraging suicides,

what better way to show that

than to actually stage an event

in which people burn themselves publicly

in a prominent place like Tiananmen Square?

DAVID: The people are swayed by their emotions

and their desire not to have to deal with a problem

that they think they can avoid.

Once you accept that your government

has been involved in a conspiracy

involving the murder of hundreds of innocent people,

you then have to come face to face with your own helplessness.

And that's not something that a lot of people want.

JASON: There are often many good reasons not to ask questions,

especially when doing so might challenge an imposing authority.

But there's also something remarkable

about those who still dare to speak truth to power,

even in the face of great risks.

PETER LI: I remember Chen Ruichang

is one of the practitioners

who was specially,

I mean, how do I say...

[CONTINUES IN MANDARIN]

We can see how much suffering

he experienced, right?

But they never change.

[SPEAKING MANDARIN]

[INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION]