Veteran Hong Kong activist Koo Sze-yiu has died at the age of 80, local media have reported. Activist Koo Sze-yiu (centre) sits in a police van after his arrest while attending a rally in Hong Kong on July 1, 2015, on the sidelines of the annual flag-raising ceremony to mark the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China. File photo: Anthony Wallace/AFP. “Bull” Tsang Kin-shing, formerly a fellow member of the now-disbanded pro-democracy League of Social Democrats, told local paper Ming Pao that Koo died of an illness on Wednesday afternoon.
Koo, who was born in Zhongshan, a city in Guangdong province, was previously diagnosed with stage four rectal cancer. Koo Sze-yiu. Photo: League of Social Democrats via Facebook. The activist, who was convicted over a dozen times throughout the years, had been bedridden since late last year and was unable to eat. He passed away, accompanied by his son, among others, according to the report.
Avery Ng, a former LSD member who protested alongside Koo to denounce human rights abuses in China, thanked the late activist.
“Ah Koo, thank you for your dedication to democracy. Memories of fighting side by side with you on the streets will always be cherished. A good brother, a good comrade. Rest in peace,” he wrote on Instagram.
Figo Chan, also of the disbanded left-wing party, thanked Koo for joining the LSD’s protests and for welcoming him when he was released from prison in October 2022.
“He was… a fighter who defended the Diaoyu Islands, cared for human rights activists on the mainland, and went to prison time and time again for the people,” Chan said on Instagram. “Farewell, Ah Koo! Koo Sze-yiu!”
Decades of activism Koo, born in 1946, was a Maoist in his youth and worked as a shipbuilder in Macau. With other anti-colonialists, he took part in the 12-3 Incident – a series of demonstrations against Portuguese colonial rule – and stormed what is now the Macau Government Headquarters.
In 1989, he protested against the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing , after which he committed himself to Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Leung Kwok-hung and Koo Sze-yiu. Photo: Todd Darling/HKFP. Later, over the course of less than a decade, he was jailed half a dozen times for flag desecration at protests against the local and national authorities.
Most recently, the elderly activist in September 2024 completed a nine-month jail term for a sedition offence, whereby he planned to protest the overhauled District Council race. Following his release, he vowed to continue protesting.
Koo served the nine-month term over a plan that never materialised to protest the election using a mock coffin, his signature protest prop. Pro-democracy activist Koo Sze Yiu stands behind placards of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam during a protest before trying to board a ferry to Macau, in Hong Kong on December 18, 2019. Photo: Philip Fong/AFP. He was handed a HK$6,000 fine in December 2023 for violating fire safety regulations after placing one of his makeshift coffins in the corridor of an industrial building. Koo Sze-yiu outside the Eastern Law Courts Building ahead of his sentencing in 2021. Photo: League of Social Democrats, via Facebook. In July 2022, he was jailed for nine years over a plan to protest the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier that year outside Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong. Koo Sze-yiu. File photo: League of Social Democrats, via Facebook. The activist was among the few figures and groups that continued to stage protests in recent years, even after Beijing enacted its national security law in Hong Kong in 2020.