Tse Chi-kin, a prominent campaigner and brother of a tour guide who was killed in a hostage crisis in Manila along with seven other Hongkongers more than a decade ago, has died after spending two years in a coma following a skiing accident.
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The 49-year-old led a delegation of survivors and family members after the gun attack in August 2010 to negotiate with the governments of Hong Kong and the Philippines for compensation, an official apology from Manila authorities and accountability over the handling of the crisis.
Tse died on Monday last week, while his funeral is set to take place next month, according to a notice posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday. A close friend of Tse said that the activist suffered a concussion during a skiing trip to Japan in January 2023 and had been in a coma since then.
“He was sent back to Hong Kong on a medical charter flight and had stayed in a coma at Princess Margaret Hospital since then,” the friend said.
Tse came under the public eye after his brother, Masa Tse Ting-chunn, was killed by Rolando Mendoza, a disgruntled former police officer armed with an M-16 assault rifle. Mendoza, then 55, stopped a bus carrying a group of Hong Kong tourists across a wide road in the Philippine capital’s largest park.
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Masa Tse, the guide of the group, was killed alongside seven other Hongkongers during a 12-hour siege on the bus. Two members of the tour group were critically injured during the assault.