Szeto Wah (Chinese: 司徒華; 28 February 1931 – 2 January 2011) was a Hong Kong democracy activist and politician.

Being one of the two icons of the Hong Kong democracy movement alongside Martin Lee, Szeto played an instrumental role in the emergence of the pro-democracy camp.

He and Martin Lee became the two pro-democrats appointed to the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee by the Beijing government in 1985 until the duo resigned in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

In 2010, he led the moderate faction of the camp to oppose the radical-led Five Constituencies Referendum movement and played a significant role in drawing the revised proposal of the electoral reform package in the Democrats' negotiation with the Beijing authorities.

[5] Under his brother Szeto Ming's influence, he and his siblings joined the YWCA which had a strong left-wing leaning at the time during his student life.

He was seen by journalist Louise do Rosario as "a dictatorial leader...in most meetings he monopolises the talking, with detail of his plan, strategies well-sorted out before his colleagues start to comprehend the basic outline.

As a result, Governor Murray MacLehose appointed a three-member committee into the event consisting of Rayson Huang, Lo King-man and Maisie Wong.

[12] Due to its scale and influence, the PTU was put under surveillance by the Standing Committee on Pressure Groups (SCOPG) of the Hong Kong government in 1979.

Szeto was also involved in the Defend Diaoyu Islands movement in 1982 sparked by the Japanese government's revision of the history textbooks.

Initiated by the Szeto-led PTU, 89 organisations attended an assembly at the Ko Shan Theatre on 18 September 1984 in response to the Green Paper.

On 27 October 1986, 91 organisations gathered to form the Joint Committee on the Promotion of Democratic Government to push forward the proposal of the "Group of 190" which demanded half of the seats in the 1988 Legislative Council to be elected directly.

[19] The committee also sent a delegation including Szeto to Beijing to meet with deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office Li Hou.

However, despite the general support the committee received on the 1988 direct elections, the Hong Kong government's Survey Office concluded that 70 per cent of the people opposed it.

The joint committee also demanded direct elections of the post-1997 Chief Executive and the Legislative Council to be included in the Basic Law.

The Joint Committee on the Promotion of Democratic Government was active in voicing support in the student protests in Beijing starting from May.

The joint committee announced its reorganisation into the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

The alliance was also involved in the Operation Yellowbird, providing shelter for the escaped activists in Hong Kong, confirming the identity of the activists with the Hong Kong Police Special Branch, liaising with the foreign consuls for the refuge applications and so forth, which successfully smuggled three or four hundred people abroad including student leaders Chai Ling and Wu'erkaixi.

Szeto Wah ran in Kowloon East, receiving more than 57,000 votes and elected with his ally Meeting Point's Li Wah-ming.

After the election, the British government replaced David Wilson with Chris Patten as the last Governor of Hong Kong.

[28] In response to the Patten's proposal, Beijing decided to dismantle the promised "through train" which allowed the 1995 elected legislature to survive through 1997.

For his staunch pro-democracy conviction, Time once described him as "democracy's foot soldier", and named him one of the 25 most influential people in Hong Kong.

[33] Critics argued that the Hong Kong government selectively persecuted Szeto for using unlicensed equipment when delivering the political message as other members had spoken on the radio and were not charged.

However, after a period of observation, Szeto believed the true intention of the LSD was to take over the leadership of the democracy movement as they had aggressively attacked other allies within the camp.

"Longhair" Leung Kwok-hung in a protest in front of the PTU headquarters said Szeto Wah had his cancer got into his brain.

[38] In the following 1 July march, Szeto on his wheelchair also received criticisms from his supporters, saying that the "Democratic Party sold out Hong Kong people."

"[41] In a service at St Andrew's Church in Tsim Sha Tsui, bells tolled six long and four short times, representing the victims of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

Pan-democrats petitioned the Hong Kong government to allow them to enter Hong Kong to attend Szeto's funeral on compassionate grounds under the one country, two systems principle,[44] although NPCSC delegate Rita Fan said the request represented a huge dilemma for the government as it would set a precedent.

[46] On 26 January, the government announced that the application of Wang Dan to enter Hong Kong had been declined by after "careful consideration"; a spokesman said the decision was made based on the potential "consequences" of allowing him in.

The decision was denounced by Wang, Wu'er Kaixi, and pro-democrat legislator Lee Cheuk-yan, saying that the government had surrendered the principle of "one country, two systems".

His brother, Szeto Keung, joined the state-owned New China News Agency Hong Kong Branch in the 1950s and remained working there.