1989 June Fourth Solidarity and the Pillar of Shame — HKU Students and the 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement

Wild-history section · Module 14 · Deep file three. This article attributes statements according to strength of evidence and presents different accounts side by side without adjudicating. Individuals are referred to as "surname + Mr./Ms."; current office-holders are referred to by title only, not by name. This article is based on events from 1989–1998 and an official announcement from 2021.

# I. 1989: Class boycotts, the mass march, and solidarity delegations to Beijing

According to the Wikipedia entry on the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS)^※, around the time of the June Fourth events in Beijing in 1989, HKFS and student unions at various universities (including the HKU Students' Union) took part in solidarity activities:

• On 20 May 1989, under a No. 8 typhoon signal, several thousand students took part in a large-scale demonstration^※;
• After 4 June, students at various universities suspended classes in succession;
• According to the HKFS entry^※, HKFS sent representatives who flew to Beijing carrying tents and roughly HK$1 million in donations, and stayed with students at Tiananmen Square. According to a 2014 25th-anniversary report by TIME magazine^※, on 25 May 1989 several Hong Kong student leaders led a group of around 20 students to Beijing, bringing with them roughly 300 tents and cash donations of close to HK$1 million — the report described this as reflecting how strongly Hong Kong society supported the students in Tiananmen at the time. This group of Hong Kong student representatives was reportedly divided into two teams: one distributed supplies to the tens of thousands of students on the square, and the other consulted with student leaders on the square and helped pass on information as the movement continued to develop.

After this group of representatives returned to Hong Kong, the scale of solidarity activity in Hong Kong society continued to grow: according to the official work page of the Pillar of Shame's creator^※, on 4 June 1997, on the eve of the handover of sovereignty over Hong Kong, more than 55,000 people gathered at Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil, one of the largest annual June Fourth commemoration events in Hong Kong, and also the occasion of the Pillar of Shame's first public appearance in Hong Kong (see next section).

According to the Wikipedia entry on the Hong Kong University Students' Union (HKUSU)^※, after the June Fourth events, the HKU Students' Union passed a motion holding the Chinese government to account over the Tiananmen crackdown.

According to the Wikipedia entry on the Undergrad^※, in 1996 the HKU Students' Union publication Undergrad published a special issue titled Five-Coloured Stones, which "reported in detail on the course of the 1989 pro-democracy movement," becoming one of the vehicles through which campus memory of the events was passed on.

# II. The Pillar of Shame: installed at HKU (1997–98)

According to the Wikipedia entry on the Pillar of Shame^※, the sculpture, created by a Danish sculptor (referred to here as "Mr. Galschiøt"), commemorates those who died on June Fourth. It stands roughly 8 metres tall and is made up of stacked, twisted human figures. According to the sculptor's official work description page^※, the sculpture is made of bronze, copper, and concrete; the entangled, twisted bodies are intended to symbolise the trampling, degradation, and disregard of individual dignity, and the sculpture is black overall, symbolising mourning and loss. It was the first of the "Pillar of Shame" series to be completed, first publicly unveiled in Hong Kong on 4 June 1997; later works in the series have also been displayed elsewhere on similar themes.

According to a 2021 official announcement from the HKU Council^※ and Wikipedia^※, the sculpture was placed on the HKU campus after the June Fourth commemoration in 1997 and subsequently stood for a long period on the podium of the Haking Wong Building. According to Wikipedia, citing the results of a 1998 student-body referendum held by the Students' Union^※, the HKU Students' Union had voted in favour of the sculpture remaining permanently on the HKU campus — according to a summary on Chinese Wikipedia^※, the sculpture went on formal display on the HKU campus starting December 1998; in September of the same year, the Students' Union had held a student-body referendum on whether the sculpture should stay, and it passed by a clear majority of 1,629 votes in favour, for the sculpture to be re-erected for permanent display on the top-floor podium of the Haking Wong Building — the podium facing the main entrance of the Students' Union, which was the exact spot where the sculpture stood for the following years.

From the time it was installed, the sculpture was tied to an annual ritual involving the Students' Union that continued for more than two decades: according to a summary of multiple media reports^※, each year in the run-up to 4 June, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China routinely sent people to clean the sculpture; members of the HKU Students' Union also, by tradition, washed the sculpture on campus on 4 June itself to commemorate those who died, making it one of the longest-running politically commemorative rituals on the HKU campus, up until the sculpture's removal in 2021.

# III. The 2021 removal dispute: accounts from different sides, presented side by side

According to a December 2021 official announcement from the HKU Council^※:

According to a December 2021 statement from the HKU Council (official): the statement said "no party has ever obtained approval from the University to display the statue on its campus and the University has the right to take appropriate actions at any time"^※. The university said the decision was based on external legal advice and a risk assessment.

According to the sculptor, Mr. Galschiøt (as quoted in reporting and his own public statements): he said he was "totally shocked" by the removal, stated that the sculpture was his private property, called on the university to account for its whereabouts, and said he reserved the right to seek damages.

No resolution has been reached to date (the location where the sculpture is being kept following its removal has not been officially disclosed). Accounts from different sides are presented side by side; this article does not adjudicate between them.

# IV. Annual commemoration and campus memory

According to the Wikipedia entry on HKUSU^※, before the 2010s, HKU and student organisations at various universities took part over many years in annual June Fourth commemoration events, and the on-campus cleaning ritual for the Pillar of Shame was for a time a fixture of HKU Students' Union tradition. Since the 2020s, the form these commemoration activities take has changed; specific events from recent years that touch on political sensitivity are handled under §6.2 and are not narrated in this article — related sources are listed in the Module 18 link directory.

Note on masking: the sculptor referred to in this article is rendered as "surname + Mr." (a living individual); the names of institutions, the sculpture, and publications are given in full as proper nouns. Events surrounding June Fourth and the dispute over the sculpture's fate are presented faithfully based on official announcements and secondary sources, with different sides' positions placed side by side without adjudication. Details of recent, highly politically sensitive commemoration activities are, per §6.2, linked only and not narrated here.