KAIFENG, China, April 4 — Chinese authorities today put on display three severely scarred former practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement who expressed their regret for setting themselves on fire last year in Tiananmen Square. It was the latest salvo in the mounting propaganda war between the government and Falun Gong, now based largely in the United States.
"I went to burn myself to demonstrate that Falun Gong is good and true but I never imagined this outcome," said Chen Guo, 20, a former music student from a hospital bed in her hometown here.
"But now I think it is a cult," she said through a mouth that could barely move because of the scars that now envelop her hairless, handless body, "and people should understand that and no longer follow it."
Over the last two days, for the first time, Chinese officials allowed a small group of foreign journalists to speak with six people involved in the grisly 2001 protest, including the three who had set themselves on fire.
Officials were present at all the interviews, though the former practitioners insisted that they were free to answer as they wished. While most had renounced Falun Gong, one said he had not and another refused to say.
The interviews were apparently part of the government's effort to counter the increasingly sophisticated public relations campaign that Falun Gong has mounted since the beginning of this year, in China and abroad. With technological know-how, Web sites, newsletters and video CD's, the group has doggedly promoted its beliefs and publicized its suppression in China.
Falun Gong, which blends slow-motion exercises and meditation with the eclectic theories of its founder, Li Hongzhi, was wildly popular in China until it was banned as an "evil cult" in 1999.
Last month, followers in Changchun, a northeastern city that is the movement's birthplace, managed to tap into a television cable and replace prime-time programming with a program about Falun Gong, part of which said the self-immolation was a government hoax to discredit the movement, city residents said. Many there have also received video CD's with vivid reports of torture suffered by practitioners. In Beijing, some people have received automated phone calls with pro-Falun Gong messages.
In recent weeks, Falun Gong's Web site has posted urgent claims about a brutal roundup in Changchun, saying that some believers had been tortured and others thrown from high-rise buildings. These reports could not be confirmed.
Official newspapers in Changchun this week acknowledged a renewed crackdown since the incident involving the television cable, and said 10 people had been arrested.
In Washington on Wednesday, Falun Gong filed a civil lawsuit against Chinese officials it accuses of harassing followers in the United States.
With propaganda streaming in from seemingly opposite ends of the universe, the conflicting claims are difficult to assess, especially since the remaining Falun Gong practitioners have been driven underground and China tightly controls its news media.
For example, while Falun Gong has long insisted that the self-immolators could not have been followers because the movement proscribes suicide, the former practitioners from Henan vehemently denied today that they were government stooges. They described their long involvement with Falun Gong, and one, at the request of a reporter, fluidly performed its signature slow-motion exercises.
As for the reported reign of terror in Changchun, an official in the city's Re-education Through Labor Bureau said Falun Gong's estimates of practitioners being held in labor camps were "hugely exaggerated."
"There are about 1,000, certainly not 5,000 — that's totally incorrect," said the official, who was reached by phone and refused to give his name. He added that at least 100, perhaps up to 200, had been detained since the television hijacking and would probably spend one to three years in a labor camp, where they would attend classes encouraging them to denounce Falun Gong. He denied that there had been instances of torture or other abuses.
What is clear, though, is that Falun Gong has retained many followers or at least sympathizers — at least in some places..
One man from Changchun said that when Li Hongzhi's image suddenly appeared on all eight of the city's cable television channels on March 5, some residents assumed that the government had lifted its ban on the movement and took to the streets to celebrate.
"It is much smaller now than before," the labor camp official said, "but there is still an underground organization with highly secret and effective communications and support and also money from abroad."
Among the six people made available for interviews this week, all from Kaifeng, three people had set themselves on fire, two said they intended to but did not and one man did not participate in the protests but helped organize the group.
Wang Jindong, a former businessman who who burned himself and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence, described how Mr. Li's writings had inspired him and his companions to douse themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire.
He, like the others interviewed, said he had started practicing Falun Gong to improve his health. But he quickly become entranced by the spiritual fulfillment outlined in Mr. Li's writings, which describe a complex cosmology that promises a post-apocalyptic nirvana and higher states of being.
"From his books I learned that this is not our real life so I burned myself to achieve a higher state of fulfillment," he said, his face still covered with scar tissue. "This has been very painful for me because my whole life was Falun Gong and now I feel I've been deceived."
The men and women presented for interviews did not all follow the government line.
Mr. Wang still praised the health benefits of Falun Gong. "As a form of exercise it really works," he said.
Almost all suggested that the government's suppression of the movement had driven them to commit increasingly desperate acts. Ms. Chen, the burned music student, and her mother, who was also severely burned, had previously unfurled a pro-Falun Gong banner on the square and sent a letter of protest to China's Parliament. They were detained and the letter was forwarded to Henan prosecutors to be used as evidence against them.
One of the prisoners, Liu Yunfang, who is serving a life sentence for organizing the event, said today that he still believed that Falun Gong was good, "though the government forbids us from saying it." With an oddly calm grin, he said he had gone to the square intending to set himself on fire, but when his lighter malfunctioned he realized that "my master wanted me to stay alive to be his mouth."