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Hong Kong pro-Beijing party chairman dies

HONG KONG
Wed Aug 8, 2007 3:51am EDT
Ma Lik speaks to reporters after becoming the new chairman of the Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), the territory's largest pro-Beijing party, in Hong Kong in this December 10, 2003 file photo. Ma died in a Guangzhou hospital on August 8, 2007 at the age of 55. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2004, local media reported. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/Files

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The head of Hong Kong's largest pro-China political party, widely criticized for comments appearing to play down the events of June 4, 1989, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, died on Wednesday, a party spokesman said.

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Ma Lik, head of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), told reporters in May that the 1989 crackdown, in which troops crushed pro-democracy protests with huge loss of life, "wasn't a massacre".

Ma later admitted he had been rash in his comments, his party apologized and said he had acted inappropriately.

Ma, 55, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer, died in a hospital in south China.

Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Annual vigils remembering the victims of June 4 are held in the territory every year.



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