(♪♪♪) lisa: 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 shoung indistinctly) lisa i turned arod and i uld 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 piceman, and he didn't resist. i made a run for it. i thought maybe i could get the oth 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 u through the scene. i could clearlsee three people, on fire. and it was absolutely the strangest thing i'd ever seen. (♪♪♪) (females reporter talking indistinctly) male reporter #1: china's communist leaders today escalated their campaign against the popular spiritual movement called fun gong.

they vowed to crushwhat t. 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. the chinese government is punishing falun gong, precting t chineseeople's peacul and hpy liv. this is a truly respon, try protecng human rights. you know, first i was distrustful of the whole thing that actually happened. it burst out of nowhere. female reporter #1: just who they were is now in dispute. the chinese government news agency says they were falun gong followers. but okespeople for the vement outside of china say th can't be true because a suicide protest goes against falun gongrinciples. (♪♪♪)

(inaudible conversation) jason: i have some first-hand experience with protests in tiananmen square. man: "stop persecuting falun gong." "falun gong isood." jason: that's me nearly 20 years ago, protesting the persetion of falun gong in china. female reporter #2: jason loftus watches more than 50 practitioners of falun gong, who have come to queen's park to urge thgovernnt to help stop china's persecution of the ancient spiritual practice. you know, the police there they treathe practitioners of falunong very brutally. soow 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 tri 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 ation after school, from yogis, sufis and self-help gurus, all in search of how to transcend human desire. and then at 18, i came across falun gong. also called falun dafa. it was a series of slow-ving 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) jason: when i took up falun gong in 1998, millions in china were doing the same. hello and thanks for watching guangdontv, sports news. the falun gong practice can not only heal but improve body and mind. jason: at first, the inese 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 fun gon was not only the second most pular spiritual or religious group after chinese buddhism, but it was also moreopular than the communistarty. you actually had a large number of people wiin the party and e party apparatus who . given the iritual, and ideological differences between falun gong and marxist-atheist thought, a number of leaders in the communist pty felt that at really posed a problem. hello, viewers.

the chinese ministry of civil affairs has decided to ban the falun dafa association. (people shouting indistinctly) jason: i didn't know anything about chine politics, and they were saying that falun gong was an evil cult. questioned if there was something i'd missed about falun go and the people involved. had i unwittingly joed a cult? thchinese government seemed intent on wiping out falun gong entirely. adherents were being sent en masse to forced labor camps and to what were called reedation 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 to the 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 t propaganda hadn't srted to ange 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 liv. then the self-immolation happened. it was horrific. innocent lives lost, others destroyed. it was alien to everything i knew about falun gong. (laughing and lking indistinctly) jason: time passed, in the west. but then i met a man whose sry would leade to fac the self-immolation event agn. my name is chen ruichang. i worked at guangdong tv from 1987 to 2013. inrvier: mr. chen, please tell us a. i was arrested several times.

which one are you referring to? (laughs) 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: they all knew i was practicing falun gong. the provinal propaganda dertment said: "guangdong tv is holding a falun gong time bomb." jason: chen was arrested at his workplace and taken to a special reeducation facility specifically for staff of the state media and government. i was in the brainwaing center when the self-immolation aired on tv.

they forced us to watch it. newsnchor #1: five infatuated falun gong members set themselves on fire in tiananmen square. as we were watching it, i immediately thought it was fake. (policeman speaking in mandarin on tv) chen: i'm a tv professional. it's just like we used to do at the tv station. all e departments e connected. when the police have a case, they tell the tv station what to produce. so they were really worried and made me a key target to be converted. they used every method to force me to give up. they forced me to sit in front of a tv

or eight hours a day. the volume was over 97 decibels. they forced my eyes open. i tried to rest. they did this for 22 days. after 22 days, the tv speakers broke. very cruel. some prisoners lost their minds. they fce you twatch nonstop so the pressure mounts. will your mi accept ? they played it endlessly. if you hear it a thousand times, you might let your guard down. oh, maybe it's te. and once a crack forms in your logical thinking,

they will drill into it until they break your will. (high-pitch noise) many people in the brainwashing center were deceived and they gave up their belief. for their illegal activities are deeply moved. sara even today, the self-immolation incident shapes the way many chise people think about falun gong. you had wall-to-wall coverage of very graphic, emotional footage. woman #1: very cruel. inhumane. seeing what falun go did to this little girl, i thinfalun gong is so repulsive. 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 at needed to be ped out. chen: their purposwas to stain this persecution. so they carefully planned the self-immolation to incite hatred in people's hearts. jason: i felt compelled to revisit the self-immation, and to investigatehen's claim that it had been staged. according to chinese state media, onanuary 2 2001, seven ople attpted to set themsves 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 cutoles allowing the fuel to soak in, before setting themselves alight. they had agreed to take action together at 2:30 p.m. however, that's not how things played out.

this woman tells state tv she drank 20 ounces of gasoline and poed the remainder on her clothes. thisop says he s the woman drinking from a spte bote and that set him into a. shortly afte poli on the square said they saw a man on fire. white smoke is shown emanating from behind a security vehicle. after the smoke had clred, someone filmed the seated man shouting a slogan. (man shouting indistinctly) jason: 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. 19 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) jason: 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) in my heart i really want to tell the story t it's just... it's somhing that i have to be very careful about, not only because of my own beliefs but also because... i still have family in china. jason: some spoke on background, and some declined, citing ongoing work in china. (♪♪♪) jason: but looking through the initial coverage on the self-immolation

i see several reports quoting a cnn journalist named lisa weaver d she appears toave wiesse the burning directly. we really we to seejust to che, and we were simply in the right time (indistinct clamoring) they ended up taking us through the scene in order to get to the bus. so we crossed the ceer 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 nhua news agency copy. ur 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 releas that lisa had initially reviewed and confird. e's saido have witnessed the seated man on fire as pice put hiflames out. she's also said to have seen the four wen ablaze. and then, after setting emselves alight hold their arms up in a falun gong pose. but when we spoke with her, lisa didn't claim to have se these dails. interviewer: 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. then tried to run away-- run away with the tape, was caught, apprehended, brout 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, threpeople, two of wm were in flames, and one of whom wasn't. he was already-- already seated. interviewer: did you kn-- woulyou be able to say if they were men, women, children? no. the only person who i could identify as a man was wang jindong, um, as he was tting there, the flames out, you know, his clothes were smoking. the other two were just too far away. my recollection aso whether these people were fun gong practitioners, i would say, at first glance, yes, because they were yelling the slogans, and, uh, you know, doing those gestures uh, that falun gong members do. it was clear to , personally, th they couldn't have been very reprentative.

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 donwrong, no explicit threat chen: the guards told me& a high-ranking official from the central government wanted to see me. theyold me to dress well. when i entered the room, as i can remember, his head was down. it looked like he was reading something. i entered the room, then halted. he looked up and said, oh, there you are." "my surname is li. what's yours?" i said, "chen."

he asked, "which year were you born?" i said, "i was born in a dragon year." "ah, i'll call you older brother chen." i said, "then, i'll address you as brother li." from what i know, li dongsheng was the vice president of china central television. he oversaw the news. then he changed the topic and said: "there's this rumor that the tiananmen self-immolation was staged." "what do you think?" i said, "you're a tv professional." so am i. they shot it just like we would. he said, "it's not like that." "cnn shot that footage, and we took it from them." jason: as chen described, li was the vice president at china central television.

according to articles in the state run press, li oversaw china central television's flagship news magazine program focus report... hello everyone, welcome to focus report. and many of the follow-ups. 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 hadeen name the fit deputy director of something called the 610 office. when the decision was made to persecute falun gong the 610 office was created a spial, extraegal party meanism 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. chen: the censorship department would send us directives.

what to report, what not to report. falun gong is spreading heretical ideas. i feel regret. i feel guilty. because i helped them deceive the people. jason: chinese dia 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, you know, just really ridiculous. th-- they d plentyf people taki. jason: in the footn in state media we can see what looked like surity personnel holding cameras. 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 themlves, in pticular, the fellow who was sitting cross-legged on the grnd. those tight shots definitely came from security personnel, because i saw them take those images and there's noay 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. (peoe talking in mandarin) jason: and the recording is free of environmental sounds like wind and ambulance sirens. unlike in this interview wi a police ofcer describi the event in a nearbmicrophone. - (speaking in mandarin) - (wind gusting) (recording stops) jason: it seems the audio could have been recorded sarately and dubbed to the footage. then presented as evidence that the iolation was inspired by a belief in falun gong. everyone must practice falun dafa. falun gong teaches one thing, but these people did the opposite. "how could he be a real falun gong practitioner&"

...if his meditation position is wrong?" 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. he was sitting in a manner that is not how falun gong sit in meditation, was saying things that no falun gong would say. everyone must practice falun dafa. 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 vering him with a fire blanket. but the rescue effort appears to be on hold. thofficer' not a rush to cover the man, or hurry him into an ambulance. and he appears to be facing e direction of the camera that is shooting the sce rather than the n 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-floed thaheadline in a hong kong newspaper as it happens, during a big conference with a lot of cnn head honchos in hong kong. jan: 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 ancnn from pursuing the story. cnn was taking tt allegation very serioly. not that they believed it but, you know, they were taking e 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. it's unlikely that their true identities will ever be independently confirmed.

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 unual findingsfromw of the alleged immolators, kaifeng city. pan visits the home of miss liu chunling, the woman who died on the square anthe moth of the 12-year-olgirl. but a man at the dr sends him away and directs him to the government for any questions. miss liu'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. woman #2: (over phone) i'm really sorry about that, but this is something that i have to do it. jason: "to do" what? woman #2: (over phone) to terminate the contract. jason: my company makes video games. and our latest title was being published by tencent,

woman #2: (over phone) they just say we have to terminate any business relationship with lofty sky. so this is not about the ga, it's about the company. jason: there's someone in the government who told you to cancel a contract? our game was pulled from storefronts in china. woman #2: (over phone) maybe there are staff inhe company, not working in the direction aligned with the government direction. i don't know. i can't really tell anything. chen: many people in the brainwashing center had been transformed. they might have broadcast my conversion that night. the police told me: "your wife has been arrested." she will be jailed ve or six years. at that moment, i felt i could barely hold on.

so my wife was also detained. what about our son?" my mother was ill. i thought lot. it was at that momen that i shed tears. i only had to say three words: "i won't practice." then i cld reunite with my family. and i could take ce of my child. but i couldn't do it.

i watched the self-immolation news in the labor camp. we were forced to watch. we couldn't bear watching those horrifyi image but they made us watch it over and over. i totally believed it. i'd been tortured badly. i was deceiv and gave up myaith. the police brought chen to the labor camp where i was held. they wanted me to convert him. i was deceived, but i thought i was right. i was sure i could co. he rushed to hug me. i pushed him away. he said, "i haven't seen her in so long." "but she won't even let me hug her." i said, "why don't we recant?"