Thirty years ago, on May 12, 1990, members of the Ukrainian Students Union began a hunger strike at Kyiv’s Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square in memory of the Chinese students who were massacred by the Chinese army a year prior in Beijing on Tiananmen Square.
The hunger strike was in response to a worldwide appeal from Harvard University students to commemorate the massacre of 1989.
Student hunger strikers arrived in Kyiv from local universities and from Warsaw universities, and the strike was conducted under the slogans: “For your freedom and ours,” “Long live student unity,” “Ukrainian students at Kruty – Chinese students on Tiananmen Square died for the ideals of freedom and democracy.” On separate placards, written in Chinese, were such slogans as “Freedom for students” and “Away with the Communists.”