Joshua Wong, a prominent figure in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring with others to lobby for foreign sanctions against Beijing. Wong, who is already serving time for subversion, pleaded guilty to the charges earlier in September.
The sentence means that two months and two days of his new term will be served concurrently with his existing sentence. Prosecutors stated that Wong, along with activists like Nathan Law, engaged in activities between July and November 2020 aimed at securing foreign sanctions and blockades against mainland China. Wong and Law were co-founders of the now-disbanded pro-democracy political group Demosisto.
Rights group Amnesty International commented that the charges against Wong "underscores the authorities' fear of prominent dissidents and shows the lengths they will go to keep them behind bars for as long as possible."
Wong, born in October 1996, was diagnosed with dyslexia in childhood and struggled with traditional schooling. By age 14, he co-founded the student activist group Scholarism, which successfully rallied over 100,000 people to protest against the implementation of mandatory "patriotic education" in schools, leading to the authorities retracting the plan.
By 2014, Wong was a recognizable face of the pro-democracy movement, having been at the forefront of the "Umbrella Movement." In 2016, he co-founded Demosisto with Law and Agnes Chow, though he often expressed discomfort with being labeled a "protest leader," preferring to see himself as a facilitator in a bottom-up movement.
Demosisto disbanded in 2020, the same year Beijing imposed the National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong. Law subsequently moved abroad to continue his advocacy, while Wong remained in Hong Kong and was barred from running for a legislative seat, with his opposition to the NSL cited as a reason.
Wong had pleaded guilty on November 23, 2020, to charges related to his involvement in protests outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019. Later, while still imprisoned, he was among 47 individuals charged with "conspiracy to commit subversion" under the NSL. This group is known as the Hong Kong 47 and represents the largest prosecution to date under the NSL. It was during his sentence for this subversion conviction that he faced the new collusion charges under the NSL.
In a social media post dated November 22, 2020, the day before pleading guilty to the earlier protest charges, Wong wrote, "Even as political power now poses a comprehensive challenge to the resilience of our civil society, I believe the people of Hong Kong will, as always, find a way to see things through." The most severe NSL sentence to date was handed to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who received a 20-year prison term for colluding with foreign forces.