Joshua Wong Sentenced to 10 Years in Hong Kong Prison
The activist, 30, was due to be freed in January. A Hong Kong judge called his offense grave and weighed a 13-year term before reducing it for his guilty plea.
.jpg?width=1200)
Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong activist who became the face of the city’s pro-democracy movement as a teenager, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday. A Hong Kong court handed down the term for his second conviction under the national security law Beijing imposed on the city in 2020.
Wong, 30, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces. Prosecutors said he and fellow activist Nathan Law agreed to press foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and China. The charge covered their work in 2020, the year the law took effect.
High Court Judge William Tam called the offense grave in nature. He said he had considered a 13-year sentence as a starting point and reduced it because Wong pleaded guilty.
Wong is already serving a four-year, eight-month sentence from the city’s largest national security trial, over an unofficial primary election in 2020. He had been due for release in January. The judge said the two sentences can run at the same time. Wong has been in custody since November 2020.
The prosecution pointed to Wong’s meetings with American politicians, including Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio, in 2016 and 2019, and to his calls for sanctions in foreign media and on social media. Law left Hong Kong and now lives in exile.
Two views of the sentence
Human Rights Watch said the sentence keeps Wong in prison until late 2036, when he will be 40. Amnesty International called the sentence cruel and a grim reminder of the city’s disdain for human rights. Eric Lai, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, said national security charges can be used again and again to keep a political prisoner in jail.
Hong Kong authorities say the security law was needed to restore stability after the 2019 protests, and that enforcement is based on evidence. Beijing views Wong as an anti-China figure who supports Hong Kong independence, a position it treats as a red line.
Wong looked calm in court and thanked his supporters before leaving, according to the Associated Press. Supporters waved to him. He has spent nearly six years in custody. Friends say he has kept reading, exercising and teaching himself guitar.
Wong first drew attention as a 15-year-old leading protests against a national education curriculum in 2012. He became a central figure in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and later helped lead the party Demosisto, which disbanded when the security law took effect. He played a major role in persuading the United States Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
