Joshua Wong, face of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, jailed for 10 years

Joshua Wong, the public face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, sentenced to 10 years in prison

The 30-year-old was once the most visible figure in Hong Kong’s now-suppressed democracy movement.

Joshua Wong, formerly the face of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, has been given a 10-year jail sentence for colluding with foreign forces under the city’s broad national security law.

Wong, 30, is one of hundreds of activists and ordinary Hongkongers detained under the law, which was introduced in 2020 after major pro-democracy protests against Beijing’s expanding influence.

Opponents say the sweeping law has crushed dissent, while officials insist it is necessary to preserve stability and deny that it has undermined the city’s prized autonomy.

Wong, who has spent the past six years in custody, has already been jailed several times for activism that began when he was a teenager.

On Thursday, Wong came to court in a dark blue long-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers and black-rimmed glasses. He appeared slimmer than in earlier public appearances.

He nodded to members of the crowded public gallery and occasionally took notes as the judge explained the reasons for the sentence.

A large crowd had assembled outside the court, with dozens of Hongkongers waiting for hours in hopes of securing a place in the public gallery. Police were also heavily deployed.

Wong is already serving a sentence for subversion and had been due for early release next year when he was hit with the latest charges, to which he had already pleaded guilty earlier in September.

The judge said on Thursday that two months and two days of the 10-year sentence would run at the same time as his current term.

Prosecutors said Wong had worked with other campaigners, including self-exiled activist Nathan Law, to seek foreign sanctions and blockades against Beijing.

The court heard that these actions took place between July and late November 2020.

Wong and Law were co-founders of Demosisto, a now-defunct pro-democracy political party.

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”, rights group Amnesty International had earlier said.

Born in October 1996 to IT professional Roger and homemaker Grace, Wong was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, which made school difficult for him.

Even so, he quickly challenged rules and conventions when they seemed unreasonable. In secondary school, he and his classmates used Facebook to protest high canteen lunch prices.

In 2011, when Wong was 14, he co-founded the pro-democracy student activist group Scholarism, which rapidly expanded in size and influence.

The next year, the group mobilised more than 100,000 people to oppose Hong Kong’s plan to introduce compulsory “patriotic education” in schools, forcing the authorities to retreat.

Wong, who was only eight months old when Hong Kong was handed back from British to Chinese rule, has spent much of his life confronting the restrictions Beijing has placed on his city.

By 2014, Wong, then a leading figure in the civil disobedience campaign known as the “Umbrella Movement”, had become one of the most recognisable faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

In 2016, he co-founded Demosisto with Law and Agnes Chow, an activist who is now also in exile.

But he often said he was uneasy about being called a “protest leader”.

“We have a lot of facilitators in this movement and I’m one of them... Instead of having a top-down command, we now have a bottom-up command hub,” Wong told The Financial Times in November 2019.

Demosisto dissolved in 2020, the same year Beijing brought in the controversial National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong.

Law departed for the UK and continued his activism overseas, while Wong remained in Hong Kong and attempted to run for a seat in the legislature — but was barred, with authorities citing his opposition to the NSL as one of the reasons.

Meanwhile, the legal cases against Wong continued to mount.

On 23 November 2020, he pleaded guilty to several charges linked to his role in protests outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019.

Then came the NSL charges. While still in prison in February 2021, Wong was among 47 people charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion”. The group became known as the Hong Kong 47 and remains the largest prosecution so far under the NSL.

Wong was still serving his 56-month sentence for the subversion conviction when he was charged last year with collusion under the NSL.

On 22 November 2020, the day before he pleaded guilty to the protest charges, Wong posted on Instagram, addressing “the people of Hong Kong”: “To be honest, I have never had much faith in Hong Kong’s politics, but I have every confidence in the people of Hong Kong.

“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 toughest NSL sentence so far had been handed to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was jailed for 20 years, also for colluding with foreign forces.