Lo Fu, former editor sentenced to 10 years for spying, dies aged 93
Former newspaper editor Lo Fu dies at the age of 93. His faith in the party was shaken by Tiananmen, but not his arrest for espionage
A leftist Hong Kong journalist once sentenced to a decade in prison on the mainland for spying for the United States died yesterday at the age of 93.
Lo Fu, former chief editor of the New Evening Post, died of gastric cancer and complications arising from pneumonia, according to his son, Law Ho-sha. "We appreciate the condolences from relatives and media friends after the news broke," Law said.
Born in 1921, Lo joined the Communist Party in 1948. Like many left-leaning intellectuals of his era, his faith was unwavering: even after he was arrested in 1982 and accused of spying, he asked his wife to check with his superiors how he could continue to pay his membership fees.
He had stayed loyal during the "anti-rightist" movement, which began in 1957 and resulted in the persecution of hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, although he gradually recognised the damage being done by the Red Guards movement during the Cultural Revolution.
The journalist was arrested on the mainland in April 1982 and sentenced to 10 years in jail the following year. According to a Xinhua report in May 1983, Lo was accused of being in the pay of US intelligence agencies, to whom he had provided information about China's "political, diplomatic and military realms".
Lo denied any wrongdoing and said the conviction was due to contacts he made with US figures at the instruction of his superiors in the party.
He never served a day in prison, but remained under house arrest in Beijing until 1993. However, Lo was fired by his employer, the Communist-affiliated Ta Kung Pao newspaper group, and his pension was cut off.