Hong Kong Activist Joshua Wong Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison on National Security Charge

Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced democracy activist Joshua Wong to 10 years in prison on Thursday, after he pleaded guilty to a charge of collusion with foreign entities under the city’s national security law.

Wong, 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others in 2020 to ask foreign countries, institutions and individuals to impose sanctions or blockades, or to take other hostile actions against the governments of Hong Kong and China. He pleaded guilty to the charge in September.

High Court Judge William Tam said the punishment had to fit the gravity of the offense, as he handed down a sentence shorter than the maximum penalty of life in prison. Tam said the offenses took place between July 1 and Nov. 23, 2020, when Hong Kong faced a very high risk to national security and the rule of law. He said he took into account Wong’s guilty plea, his remorse and his education efforts in prison.

From teenage protest leader to a decade in prison

Wong has been in detention since November 2020, when he pleaded guilty to inciting and organizing an unauthorized anti-government assembly during protests that shook the city in 2019. His current term was due to end in January. The new sentence will be served at the same time as the rest of that term, which shortens it by two months in effect, according to Reuters. He will be 40 when he leaves prison.

Wong became known around the world as the face of Hong Kong’s democracy movement as a teenager. He co-founded a group called Scholarism at 14 and helped lead the 2014 Umbrella Movement, when protesters filled streets in the city’s center for 79 days. He appeared on the front cover of Time magazine in 2014 and in a Netflix documentary in 2017, and he was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his mitigation comments, Wong said he mistakenly thought his actions were within the law, and that he had never advocated Hong Kong independence or the collapse of China. He recalled a national security officer telling him the two of them were “enemies,” and said he replied: “You are not my enemy. We are all Hong Kongers; there is no antagonism between us.” The judge called Wong’s efforts at rehabilitation in prison “commendable.”

Reuters described the sentence as the latest blow for a movement whose followers are now in detention, in exile or, in some cases, silent. Demosisto, the political party that grew out of the student group Wong co-founded, was disbanded within hours of the national security law taking effect in June 2020.

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters.