Ma Lik (
"He died at 2pm this afternoon," Lam Yau-fau, a DAB official, said.
DAB Vice Chairman Ip Kwok-him (
Local media reported that Ma's condition worsened after he contracted pneumonia, and that he had fallen into a coma and was breathing through a machine.
Ma announced he was suffering from colon cancer in August 2004, just weeks before he successfully ran for a legislative seat.
DAB said later that month he had undergone successful surgery, and since then he has been traveling between Hong Kong and Guangzhou for treatment.
Although he also serves as a Hong Kong delegate to China's legislature, the National People's Congress, Ma was not known as an outspoken pro-Beijing hardliner. But he triggered a major backlash in May when he questioned whether the Chinese crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989 was a "massacre."
Hong Kongers are still sensitive about the crackdown, which occurred before the then-British colony's handover to Beijing.
Ma left for treatment in Guangzhou immediately after his Tiananmen Square comments and did not return to Hong Kong.
He missed the official festivities marking Hong Kong's 10th anniversary under Chinese rule, which were attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Ma took over as DAB leader from Tsang Yok-sing (
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
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