List of Famous people who died in 2002

John Bordley Rawls was an American moral and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls' work "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."

Ebrahim Al-Arrayedh was a Bahraini writer and poet, generally considered to be one of Bahrain's greatest poets and one of the leaders of the Bahraini literary movement in the 20th century.

John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung was the fifth Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong and the first cardinal from that diocese. He was a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Mikayil Huseyn oglu Abdullayev was an Azerbaijani painter, a People's Painter of the former USSR since 1963, and creator of a series of paintings entitled Through India.

Branislav "Branko" Stanković was a Bosnian Serb footballer and manager, from Sarajevo.

Abdur Rahman Badawi was an Egyptian existentialist professor of philosophy and poet. He has been called the "foremost master of Arab existentialism." He authored more than 150 works, amongst them 75 which were encyclopaedic. He wrote easily in his native Arabic, English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, and read Greek, Latin and Persian.

Shoichi Arai was a Japanese professional wrestling promoter. Arai ran Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling from 1995 until its closure in 2002.

Atef Salem was an Egyptian film director. He directed 32 films between 1954 and 2001. Many of his films were scripted by the novelist Naguib Mahfouz. His 1967 film Khan el khalili was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival.