(Minghui.org) According to various reports published by the Epoch Times and other world media, political infighting continues to unfold at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The world first saw Wang Lijun, former top cop of the province-level city of Chongqing seek refuge at the US Consulate in Chengdu on February 6, 2012, and then learned that Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s Party head, was removed from his position and placed under house arrest on March 15. Most recently, Zhou Yongkang, head of the regime’s central Political and Legal Committee (PLC), is allegedly being closely monitored and tightly controlled.

It is worth noting that all three of the above-mentioned men are core members of the Party faction led by former Party head Jiang Zemin, who singlehandedly launched the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. In order to carry out his persecution, Jiang made the PLC a powerful organization in the apparatus of the regime, controlling the police, the armed police, the courts, and the Procuratorates—nearly everything having to do with law enforcement. Zhou Yongkang has been the regime’s top cop for a long time, having headed the PLC since 2007. Before that he was the Minister of Public Security. Bo Xilai was said to be Zhou’s handpicked successor to head the PLC before his fall from power. Who is going to take over the PLC has become a focal point of the regime's infighting.

Jiang Zemin has pushed his inhuman persecution campaign forward by deceiving the nation. Using the regime's ability to control all information and flooding society with propaganda, Jiang created lies defaming Falun Gong. One particularly egregious lie involved the staged self-immolation on Tiananmen Square.

On January 23, 2001, five individuals allegedly set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square. Within hours, Chinese authorities flooded the state-run media, CCTV, with grisly photos of the event, claiming the self-immolators were Falun Gong practitioners. Critics of the persecution of Falun Gong, however, say the entire self-immolation incident was very suspicious. In July 2001, an investigative video was released on the Internet that dissects CCTV's self-immolation footage. It references information reported by CNN and the Washington Post to demonstrate that the incident was staged. (See the video at Falsefire.com )

Inside China, where the state-run media was saturated with programs accusing the Falun Gong teachings of causing the tragedy, the incident became a key tool for the communist regime to skew public opinion against Falun Gong. The “self-immolation” infuriated a misled public whose anger, over time, was directed toward the group.

Whereas in prior years Falun Gong had generally been a household name and was widely respected in China, after months of media coverage of the “self-immolation” people changed from sympathizing with Falun Gong to attacking it. Hate crimes targeting Falun Gong practitioners increased and Jiang’s faction within the central regime also escalated its persecution. There is evidence that former PLC head Luo Gan personally directed the self-immolation hoax in order to please Jiang and advance the persecution of Falun Gong.

Security Officer Clubs Non-practitioner Liu Chunling on the Head; Eyewitness Reveals Details of Her Killing

The self-immolation video aired on CCTV shows a man wearing a military overcoat appearing to strike Ms. Liu Chunling, one of the self-immolators, on the head with a heavy object. The impact of the blow sent her immediately to the ground. The footage however does not show a close-up shot of Ms. Liu’s killing. Over the years people have wondered what exactly the heavy object was that the murderer used to end Ms. Liu’s life.

One Epoch Times reporter recently came across an insider who happened to know an eyewitness to Ms. Liu’s killing. Below is what this eyewitness told the insider, who then recounted everything to the reporter. This eyewitness was a staff member of the 610 Office in the Shizipian residential area of Yuzhong District, Chongqing. He was sent to Beijing to capture local practitioners who went there to appeal for Falun Gong. His testimony:

“On the day of the self-immolation, I went to take a walk around Tiananmen Square after lunch. When I approached the monument, I noticed a large pile of fire extinguishers at the base of the monument and figured something was about to happen. I kept walking around and soon saw fire and smoke on the north side of the square.

“When I followed a few police officers to get there, I saw a tall and strong army policeman slamming the back of a woman’s head with a fire extinguisher; the woman was engulfed in aerosol and dust. She fell immediately. Because the policeman used such blunt force, he lost hold of the extinguisher and it flew out of his hands.

“I was shocked at what I saw. More perplexing was that none of the other police officers present questioned this man. They just let him walk away. I felt a chill down my spine and was pretty sure that it was a planned killing.

“Later on, when I got a chance to watch a Falun Gong practitioner-produced video revealing the truth of the self-immolation, I saw one slow-motion segment showing a club-shaped object flying away from the back of the victim’s head. Having witnessed that critical moment, I knew the object was actually the handle of the fire extinguisher the video had captured. The rest of the view of the extinguisher was blocked by the foam it emitted and thus was not captured on video.

“Therefore, all these years I’ve never been influenced, no matter how Jiang and his gang tried to demonize Falun Gong. I know all the rulers do is to incite people’s hatred toward Falun Gong.”

Liu Chunling’s 12-year-old Daughter Liu Siying also Killed

Liu Chunling’s daughter, Liu Siying, was only 12 years old then, yet the regime still made her participate in the staged self-immolation. CCTV showed that she was still able to sing loudly even after her trachea was supposedly cut open in a tracheotomy as burn treatment, a medical impossibility. Critics worried that the communist regime would not be happy with her survival and recovery. A few months later she indeed died a very suspicious death on the day she was to be discharged from the hospital. The morning of March 17, 2001 she was still quite animated and active. A few hours later she was suddenly in critical condition and died.

This mother-daughter duo were not Falun Gong practitioners. Days after the self-immolation incident, Washington Post reporter Philip Pan traveled to their hometown to investigate, finding no one had ever seen them practice Falun Gong. In his article titled “Human Fire Ignites Chinese Mystery,” published on February 4, 2001, Pan wrote, “There was something wrong with her [Liu Chunling]...She hit her mother. She hit her daughter too…No one ever saw her practice Falun Gong.”

Chen Guo and Her Mother Still Under House Arrest

Two other self-immolators are also a mother and daughter. Chen Guo, a young, pretty student of the Central Conservatory of Music, and her mother were both burned very badly in the event. Where are they now?

An insider revealed in a Minghui article published on January 24, 2005, Chen Guo and her mother are being held in the Beijiao Welfare Home in Kaifeng City, Henan Province. A retired policeman named Zhan Jingui is responsible for monitoring them around the clock all year long. They are forbidden to have any outside contact. (See http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2005/1/28/56967p.html)

Xinhua Net, a regime mouthpiece, published a so-called interview with Chen Guo’s mother Hao Huijun in January 2011. The article ridiculed Ms. Hao, depicting her as someone whose face looks like an ugly mask.

Chen Guo’s fellow college student Wang Bo once said Chen had stopped practicing Falun Gong back in 1999. Chen instead considered a woman named Liu Yunfang from Henan Province her real master. One Chinese blogger revealed that Chen Guo has supposedly already died of a large-scale infection, though the information is not verifiable. The regime has used Chen Guo and her mother to deceive the public and incite people’s hatred toward Falun Gong. Yet, once the regime saw no more use for them, they faced miserable consequences. No one knows the mother and daughter's exact situation.

Main Character Wang Jindong Considered Public Security Agent

Wang Jindong, the lead self-immolator, was at the center of several inconsistencies. Long after the incident, the regime's state-run television interviewed a man identified as Wang Jindong. Yet, comparisons of the facial features of the man in that film clip with the on-the-scene clip indicate that the interviewee differs from the immolator. Speech-identification technology also verified that two different persons played the roles. National Taiwan University’s Speech Processing Laboratory, a world leader in the area of Chinese language speech identification, synthesis, and verification, analyzed the voice of one of the self-immolators named Wang Jindong from a number of different interviews broadcast by China’s state-run television. The laboratory concluded that the Wang Jindong interviewed in one of the programs is a different person than the Wang Jindong appearing in the other programs, suggesting that the regime hired different actors at different times.

Wang appeared to be the most determined during the self-immolation farce. He shouted slogans and refused medical care. However, according to Falun Gong practitioners, the words he uttered and the way he crossed his legs were nothing like a real practitioner. Some analysts pointed out that he was a police-controlled spy.

One week after the self-immolation hoax, Xinhua News increased the number of self-immolators from five to seven. Chen Guo’s so-called master, Liu Yunfang, was added to the cast; yet an interview with her indicates she was inconsistent in her statements and her words were contradictory to Falun Gong teachings. Those who have studied the incident closely generally consider her either a spy or an accomplice to the public security.

The PLC is Responsible for the Self-immolation Tragedy

According to some insiders, former PLC head Luo Gan personally directed this farce. Lin Chunshui of China's Democratic Party revealed that a high-level public security official told him on January 28, 2001 that Jia Chunwang already knew about the planned self-immolation one day before it took place.

There is also evidence that the regime's mouthpiece media spared no efforts helping the regime deceive the public with the staged self-immolation.

CCTV Focus journalist Li Yuqiang admitted in early 2002 that they fabricated certain video clips of the self-immolation. For instance, they placed the Sprite bottle in between Wang Jindong’s legs and then shot video of the scene. The purpose was to try to convince people that Falun Gong practitioners were setting themselves on fire. Li said they would never have shot that bottle scene had they known it would be so easily debunked.

After viewing the video in a presentation to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights at the United Nations on August 14, 2001, the International Education Development (IED) organization said the video “in our view proves that this event was staged by the [Chinese] government.”