Szeto Wah

Biography

Szeto Wah was born in Hong Kong in 1931 with ancestry from Kaiping, Guangdong. Ten years later his poor family fled to their ancestral home from Hong Kong due to the Japanese bombing in the 1941 Battle of Hong Kong. He enrolled in Queen's college and graduated from Grantham College of Education. He entered the teaching profession in 1952, and became headmaster of the GCEPSA Kwun Tong Primary School in 1961.

He became a baptized Christian in 1974.

1940s

Szeto was a core member of the pro-communist Hok Yau Dancing Club, of which he remained a member until 1958.

1970s

In 1973 he led the Hong Kong teacher's strike protest when the government proposed to cut teachers' salaries by 15%. He then founded the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union in 1974. Under his leadership, the HKPTU expanded rapidly and eventually became the most powerful pressure group in the late 70s to 80s. Szeto stepped down from the union president in 1990.

In 1978 he led the first "Chinese-language movement" in Hong Kong to get mother-tongue classes introduced in secondary schools. That same year he played a leading role in solving the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School (寶血會金禧中學) issue involving the "Golden Jubilee school corruption incident" (金禧事件). Louise do Rosario, writing in The Standard, called him the doyen of the Hong Kong pressure groups and "one of the most influential persons in Hong Kong's political scene since mid-70s. He led a second Chinese language movement in 1979 when the University of Hong Kong said receiving new students do not need a passing grade in Chinese language courses.

1980s

In 1982 Szeto led an anti-Japanese protest to denounce official Japanese revisionism of atrocities during the 1930s and 40s in China in history textbooks (such as Nanking Massacre). Szeto was elected in 1985 and in 1988 to the Legislative Council through the functional constituency of the education sector.

In 1985 Szeto, along with Martin Lee, was appointed to the Drafting Committee for the Basic Law. Stephen Vines suggested Szeto was appointed because the central government appreciated his political significance, notwithstanding their dislike for his ideas. He opposed the decriminalization of homosexuality in Hong Kong, arguing that "it will encourage more people to take up such abnormal behavior."

In 1989, following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, his relation with the Communist Party of China became strained., Szeto established the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China which advocates an end to the single-party ruling of China, and which the Beijing leadership regards as subversive. He remained the organisation's chairman for 21 years, until his death in early 2011. During 1989, he and Martin Lee organised protests against Beijing and withdrew from the Drafting Committee of Hong Kong Basic Law after the incident. Both were banned from visiting mainland China.

Szeto was a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference delegate since 1983, but boycotted its meetings after June 1989.

1990s

In 1990 Szeto would help form the United Democrats of Hong Kong, considered the territory's first political party. He returned to Kowloon East in 1991 and in the redrawn constituency in 1995. After the Handover of Hong Kong, Szeto refused to be a councilor of the Provisional Legislative Council, whose members were elected by an electoral college hand-picked by the Communist Party of China. In the 1998 and 2000 elections, he was returned through the multi-member constituency in the same area. During his tenure in the Legislative Council, the group would evolve into the Democratic Party. Time once described him as "democracy's foot soldier", and named him one of the 25 most influential people in Hong Kong. In 1997, he was awarded the Homo Homini Award for human rights activism by the Czech group People in Need.

2000s

Szeto has long supported the commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen protest victims and his group organizes annual candlelight vigils every 4 June. In 1997, then chief executive elect Tung Chee-hwa attempted to pressurise Szeto into not organising memorials, and Szeto refused to speak to Tung ever again after three such attempts. Upon hearing Szeto's declaration on the occasion of his seventieth birthday that he desired to visit several sites in mainland China that meant a great deal to him, a consultant to Tung met with him and Albert Ho to propose making a secret trip to the mainland with them. Szeto insisted on public transparency and turned down this offer.

On 25 May 2007 Szeto Wah was one of eight people arrested and charged with speaking at a radio show broadcast from Mong Kok street hosted by Citizen's radio on the subject of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. Critics have argued that the Hong Kong government has selectively persecuted Szeto for using unlicensed equipment when delivering the political message as other members have spoken on the radio and were not charged. In a democratic conference in 2007, Szeto publicly stated that the People's Liberation Army was controlled by the Communist Party of China and not the country. He reiterated that the army is a tool to ensure the party's authoritarian rule.

In 2008 he transferred more than $781,000 in donation collected by the alliance to the Hong Kong Red Cross as relief for the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Although Szeto has mainly been critical of mainland authorities, he made a controversial surprising move in May 2010 in support of the Consultation Document on the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive and for Forming the LegCo in 2012 after the central government had endorsed the Democratic Party's proposal to revise it. Democratic Party Chairman Albert Ho said that Szeto Wah played an influential role in the decision-making process, but was not the one to make the final decision.

Death and funeral

In 2010 Szeto announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, for which he was undergoing chemotherapy treatment. He dismissed as "crocodile tears" Regina Ip's urging of Beijing to allow him to return to the mainland. He also ruled out seeking medical attention there, saying he would seek to visit Tan Zuoren and Liu Xiaobo.

Szeto died at the Prince of Wales Hospital on 2 January 2011, aged 79. In a service at St Andrew's Church in Tsim Sha Tsui, bells tolled six long and four short times, representing the victims of the Tiananmen Square protests. In accordance with his wishes, Szeto's body was cremated; half the ashes to be scattered in HK waters, the other half scattered in a garden at Cape Collinson Crematorium.

Exiled mainland dissidents Wang Dan and Wu'erkaixi had expressed their strong desire to attend the funeral. Pan-democrats petitioned the Hong Kong Government to allow them to enter Hong Kong to attend Szeto's funeral on compassionate grounds under the One country, two systems principle, although Rita Fan said the request represented a huge dilemma for the government as it would set a precedent. On 10 January, Wang Guangya, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, declared that decision on whether to allow dissidents to enter was in the hands of the Hong Kong government; he expressed confidence that they would "handle it well". On 26 January, the government announced that the application of Wang Dan to enter Hong Kong had been declined by after "careful consideration"; spokesman said the decision was made based on the potential "consequences" of allowing him in. The decision was denounced by Wang, Wu'er Kaixi, and democratic legislator Lee Cheuk-yan, saying that the government had surrendered the principle of "One country, two systems".

Outgoing RTHK Director of Broadcasting Franklin Wong was criticised by his staff and others for not holding a live webcast of the funeral.