For Tang Siu-pun, a small measure of happiness after years of despair

After an accident left him paralysed in his 20s, Tang Siu-pun sank into despair and thought constantly about taking his own life. But in his unsuccessful battle for the legalisation of euthanasia, he found some measure of purpose in living, he once said, and his courage became an inspiration to Hongkongers.

Tang, better known as Ah Bun, who died yesterday at age 43, was practising for a gymnastics event in 1991 when he fell badly and injured his spine. The accident left him paralysed from the neck down.

In 2003, using a stick held in his mouth to type, he made an appeal to then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, asking for euthanasia to be legalised. "Time has become meaningless for me. I look at the clock ticking second after second every single day and what am I waiting for? It's just the moment when death comes," he wrote in the letter.

The request was turned down, but his case lead to widespread debate over issues involving the right to die.

Tang's appeal caught the attention of Professor Stephen Hawking when the famed cosmologist visited the city in 2006.

Hawking - confined to a wheelchair himself after developing motor neurone disease when he was 21 - said it would have been a "great mistake" if Tang had ended his life, adding "while there's life, there is hope".

In 2007, Tang wrote the autobiographical I Want Euthanasia, in which he argued for the right to die in peace and with dignity. "If everyone cannot escape death, then why can't they [at least] make their last choice before they die?" he wrote in the preface.