When asked in the early 1990s how he would evaluate himself in a sentence, Szeto Wah - union leader, legislator, a drafter of Hong Kong's Basic Law, co-founder of the Democratic Party - gave a short answer. 'I am a patriot,' he said.
For 21 years he chaired the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which wants an end to one-party rule on the mainland and vindication for the victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Beijing calls it subversive.
Re-elected the alliance's chairman once again in November, Szeto pledged to fight on despite lung cancer that had spread to his bones. 'It is a cross which brings risks,' he said of his leadership of the organisation, 'but I am willing to bear it to the end.'
The end came yesterday for the man affectionately known as Uncle Wah. He died of cancer at the age of 79.
Szeto had once harboured high hopes for the country's future after the founding of the People's Republic of China. 'I thought my hope for a prosperous, democratic and free China had been realised at that time,' he wrote in July 1997.
Those hopes faded, but his idealism never did. In 1973 Szeto spearheaded Hong Kong's first territory-wide teachers strike in protest at a government decision to cut teachers' salaries by 15 per cent.
The next year, he founded the Professional Teachers' Union, which subsequently blossomed into one of the city's biggest trade unions, now with 82,000 members. He served as the union's president until 1990.
