Joshua Wong jailed for 10 years in Hong Kong national security case
The 30-year-old became the global face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. A judge said the sentence must reflect the community’s disgust at his efforts to seek foreign sanctions.
HONG KONG, Nov 5 – Joshua Wong, the activist who became the global face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in jail for collusion with foreign forces under the city’s national security law.
High Court Judge William Tam handed down the sentence in a packed courtroom.
“The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime,” Tam said.
The judge said the court also needed to show the community’s disgust at Wong’s plan, carried out with others, to work with foreign forces to endanger national security.
Wong, now 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, groups or people outside China to impose sanctions or blockades on Hong Kong or China, or take other hostile action against the government.
He pleaded guilty to the charge in September.
It is his second national security case, according to several outlets. He was already serving a sentence from an earlier case and had been due for release next year.
Wong has said he never called for Hong Kong to break away from China, and never tried to bring down the government in Beijing.
“I have never advocated Hong Kong independence,” Wong told the court during the mitigation stage of the case. He said he had also never promoted the collapse of China or regime change.
He said he had never received money from abroad or paid foreign political consultants. Wong said that, at the time, he believed he was acting within the law. He later realized he “had been mistaken,” he said.
Wearing a blue shirt and dark-framed glasses, with his hair cut short, Wong stood between three guards. He nodded twice to supporters in the public gallery before the sentence was read.
The judge said the offenses took place between July 1 and November 23, 2020. He described that period as a time of serious risk to the rule of law in Hong Kong.
At a hearing in September, prosecutors pointed to what they called an international media and political campaign by Demosisto. Wong was one of the leaders of the political party, which has since disbanded.
Prosecutors said the group sought sanctions and other hostile action against Hong Kong and China in 2019 and 2020. At one point, the group also backed a referendum on Hong Kong’s sovereignty.
Wong’s meetings with politicians from the United States and Europe have angered Beijing. Chinese officials have called him a “black hand” of foreign forces.
Wong has been in custody since November 2020. That was when he pleaded guilty to inciting and organizing an unauthorized protest against the government during the mass demonstrations that shook Hong Kong in 2019.
He has been detained many times over the years for his role in organizing pro-democracy rallies.
He first came to wide attention as a teenager, helping lead student protests in 2012. He later became a leading figure in the 2014 “Umbrella Movement,” when protesters occupied major thoroughfares in Hong Kong for weeks to demand free elections.
Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, after months of protests that sometimes turned violent. The law punishes subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with sentences of up to life in prison.
Wong was among a group of young activists whose protest activities have been outlawed.
Beijing says the law was necessary to restore stability to Hong Kong. Critics, including rights groups and several Western governments, argue that it has been used to suppress dissent and has sharply reduced the freedoms Hong Kong was promised when Britain returned the territory to China in 1997.
International human rights organizations and several Western and Asian governments are closely monitoring the cases of Wong and other activists, viewing them as a test of Hong Kong’s remaining civil liberties and judicial independence.
In February, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, the city’s most outspoken critic of Beijing, was jailed for 20 years for collusion with foreign forces and sedition. His landmark trial drew criticism from around the world.
Nathan Law, who was named as a co-conspirator in Wong’s case, left Hong Kong in 2020 and now lives in Britain. Hong Kong authorities have offered a reward for information leading to his arrest.
