The Way I See the Renewed Attention to the "Tiananmen Immolation Incident"

By Shou Yi

(Clearwisdom.net) On March 5, 2002, the Changchun cable TV network aired Falun Gong truth-clarification videos. Among the videos broadcast was footage that exposed the truth about the regime's staging of the tragic immolation incident in Tiananmen Square. Since then, the government has allowed some of the immolators to be interviewed under police-controlled conditions by Western media. This shows clearly how desperate and weak Jiang and his regime actually are.

Jiang's regime is not able to explain the numerous inconsistencies in the video. Instead, they led the so-called self-immolators to speak to the state run media and claim that they had practiced Falun Gong. Here, I would like to express my deep sympathy for the suffering of the "self-immolators" and their families. But, in addition to that, I would also like to point out that Ms. Liu Chunling [one of the immolators who died at the square] was obviously not a Falun Gong practitioner. According to a Washington Post journalist's interview in Liu's hometown, Kaifeng City, her neighbors stated that they had never seen her practicing Falun Gong. Furthermore, looking at slowed-down footage of the self-immolation video broadcast by CCTV, Liu Chunling was clearly beaten to death by a military officer with a hard object, as well as being burned. As for the immolators who claimed to be Wang Jindong and Chen Guo, their true identity is unknown. They can pose as whoever the government claims them to be. These people simply acted according to the government's direction. Actually, the fact that the government doesn't dare to allow Falun Gong practitioners to replay the slowed-down footage of the government's own videos, shows that the government is afraid of being exposed. If they are in the right, then why are they afraid of letting others speak? Why is it that only they have the right to accuse others? Why are others not allowed to defend themselves?

Jiang's regime spares no effort to try to make people believe that their puppets were Falun Gong practitioners. It's like, if they could only prove that Falun Gong members set themselves on fire, then their brutal persecution of Falun Gong would be justified. If this was the case, then why had this kind of tragedy never taken place before the persecution started in July 1999? Why has such an incident never occurred in Taiwan, which shares the same Chinese culture and where many Falun Gong practitioners live? Why has such a tragedy never occurred [amongst Falun Gong practitioners] in Europe, the U.S, or in any other Western countries? Why did this so-called self-immolation only happen in China, where Falun Gong is being persecuted by its dictator? Even if people indeed committed this self-immolation, wasn't it caused by the horrors of the dictator's persecution?

Even if we assume that a few people who practiced Falun Gong [but who didn't cultivate their xinxing] did something extremely irresponsible, we still cannot negate a spiritual practice that has brought physical and spiritual health to tens of millions of people on such a basis. During the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese monk committed self-immolation to protest the government's tyranny. According to the logic of Jiang's regime, shouldn't Buddhism be criticized for this? In the 90's, there were students in South Korea who committed self-immolation during the democracy movement. Can you so claim that the democracy movement misled them?

In fact, there have been many cases in China in which people committed suicide because they could not endure the government officials' brutality, including cases of self-immolation protests. If Jiang's regime is really being responsible to people's lives, why don't they publicize these cases in order to warn of the corrupt government officials? Why do they keep playing over and over again the staged immolation video and force those few physically and mentally scarred souls to play the roles set by them? It is obvious that Jiang's group is doing this simply to find an excuse for its ever-escalating persecution. Yet, how can such an excuse and a falsified case cover up their crime of torturing to death so many innocent Falun Gong practitioners? Can we deny the fact that tens of millions of people have benefited physically and mentally from the practice of Falun Gong on the basis of a few people's extreme actions?
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.cc/mh/articles/2002/4/6/27979.html

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