Ding Lik-kiu

Dr. Ding Lik-kiu (Chinese: 陳立僑, 1921 in Sarawak, British Malaya – 24 June 2008 in San Francisco, United States) was a prominent Hong Kong social activist in the 1970s to 80s.

Ding was born in an impoverished family in 1921. He studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and served as a medical missionary in Borneo, where he helped set up Christ Hospital.

After moving to Hong Kong in 1962, he started fighting for the rights of workers and the underprivileged. His focus on social ills started with drug addiction, one of the city's gravest social problems at the time. He was an experienced narcotics researcher and called for better rehabilitation of addicts. A methadone outpatient scheme, which Ding had advocated since the late 1960s, was set up in 1972 by the Medical Health Department. He even opposed to the performance of the Rolling Stones in Hong Kong because of their past association with drugs.^[1]

Among other issues he also campaigned against corruption, drug addiction and price rises by public utilities, and advocated women's right to abortion, workers' rights, democratic reform, environmental protection, population growth and human rights protection.

He led a seven-member delegation to London in May 1984 to lobby for democratic reform in Hong Kong before the colony's handover to China and met with the former British Prime Minister Edward Heath.

He was the chairman of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee for more than 20 years. He was also founding chairman of the Association for Democracy and Justice in 1985 and became founding chairman of the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood in 1986. He founded first green group in Hong Kong Conservancy Association and Hong Kong Youth Music Society.

Ding emigrated to San Francisco in 1990 and died of pneumonia on 24 June 2008 at the age of 87.

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