List of Famous people who died in 2019

Yuu Shimaka was a Japanese actor and voice actor affiliated with Production Baobab, and subsequently with Production Aigumi. He was the Japanese voice of the Disney character Goofy.

María Rivas was a Venezuelan Latin jazz singer, composer, and painter.

María de la Encarnación Paso Ramos , better known as Encarna Paso, was a Spanish film and television actress.

Pierre de Saintignon was a French politician. He was a member of the French Socialist Party since 1967. He was elected councilor to the Lille municipality in 1989, 1995, 2001, 2008 and 2014, the first two terms under Pierre Mauroy and the other three under Martine Aubry. From 2001, he was the First Deputy-Mayor, in charge of finance, economic development and military matters. In 1998, 2004 and 2010 he was elected councilor the Regional Council of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, where he sat as first vice-president, in charge of economic development. Most of his political career was as an unofficial chief of staff, rather than as a foreground person. He was chosen to lead the PS list for the 2015 regional elections that were held on 6 and 13 December 2015.

Cong Weixi, who also used the pen names Bi Zheng (碧征) and Cong Ying (从缨), was a Chinese novelist. Condemned as a "rightist" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, he spent 20 years in the laogai camps. Following his release in 1978, he published China's first novel on laogai and founded the "High Wall Literature" genre that depicts the traumas suffered by political prisoners in the labor camps. Highly influential in the post-Cultural Revolution literary scene, his works have been translated into many languages.

Joseph Bertony was a French-born Australian engineer. Trained as a naval architect, he served in the French Navy during the Second World War and, after the Fall of France, as a spy for the French intelligence services. Bertony was captured twice by the Germans and imprisoned in concentration camps and successfully escaped both times. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery and emigrated to Australia after the war. Bertony worked as a civil engineer and played a key role in designing the temporary works that allowed construction of the Sydney Opera House sails. This entailed making more than 30,000 manual calculations with an accuracy of 0.5 inches (1.3 cm). Subsequent computer checks showed that he had not made a single error. In later life he worked on wind turbine projects and as a mentor to young engineers.

Yonrico Scott was an American drummer and percussionist. He was a longtime member of the Grammy winning The Derek Trucks Band, became a bandleader of his own ensemble, the Yonrico Scott Band, and later worked with the Royal Southern Brotherhood, with Cyril Neville. Having developed his craft not only from years of session work, roadwork, and study, the Cape Cod Times proclaimed him "a standout in the band... whose strong beats powered songs such as 'I'll Find My Way' off the group's Songlines CD".

Gilles Bertin was a French musician and singer, and a member of the punk band Camera Silens from 1981 to 1986.

Artur Manfred Max Neef was a Chilean economist of German descent. Max-Neef was born in Valparaíso, Chile. He started his career as a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s. He was known for his taxonomy of fundamental human needs and human scale development. In 1983, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "revitalising small and medium-sized communities through 'Barefoot Economics'."

Éric Holder was a French novelist.