Reactions to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests While the government initially tried to justify its suppression of the protest, releasing official statements and creating museum exhibits on the events of June 3–5, it now denies that such suppression ever occurred. In 2011, an opinion piece, "Tiananmen Square a Myth", was published in China Daily, the CCP's English-language newspaper. The article claims that, "When eventually troops were sent in to clear the [Tiananmen] square, the demonstrations were already ending. But by this time the Western media were there in force, keen to grab any story they could." There is no mention of a counterrevolutionary rebellion, as earlier government
Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident practitioners, but were not scrutinised for the methods they used. This resulted in the widespread use of torture, sometimes resulting in death. Tiananmen Square was one of the main venues where Falun Gong practitioners gathered to protest the persecution, usually by raising banners in defence of the group, or stage peaceful meditation sit-ins. Ian Johnson of the "Wall Street Journal" estimated that by 25 April 2000, more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested for attempting to demonstrate in Beijing, most of them in or on the way to Tiananmen Square. Seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration