By Greg Torode and Clare Jim
HONG KONG, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Activist Joshua Wong, who became the global face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in jail on a charge of collusion with foreign entities under the city’s national security law.
Wong was among a group of young people whose protest efforts have effectively been outlawed by a sweeping national security law Beijing imposed on the Asian financial hub in 2020, after sometimes violent demonstrations.
“The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime,” High Court Judge William Tam told a packed courtroom while delivering a sentence shorter than the maximum penalty of life in jail.
“It is also necessary for the court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts with others to collude with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security.”
Wong, now 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, bodies, or individuals outside China to impose sanctions or blockades, or engage in other hostile activities against the government.
He pleaded guilty to the charge in September.
The cases of Wong and others are being closely watched by international human rights groups and some Western and Asian countries tracking the adoption of the national security law in the former British colony.
In February, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong’s most vocal China critic, was jailed for 20 years for collusion with foreign forces and sedition following a landmark trial that sparked international criticism.
WONG NODS TO PUBLIC GALLERY AHEAD OF SENTENCING
Wearing a blue shirt and dark-framed glasses, with a short back-and-sides haircut, Wong, flanked by three guards, repeatedly nodded to a public gallery ahead of the sentencing.
“I have never advocated Hong Kong independence, nor have I ever promoted the ‘collapse of China’ or regime change,” Wong said during the trial’s mitigation phase.
“I have also never received foreign funding or spent money to hire foreign political consultants.”
Wong, repeatedly detained for his role in organising pro-democracy rallies, said he later realised he had been mistaken in his belief that his activities were within the bounds of the law.
“These harsh sentences have left many Hong Kong people deeply fearful,” said housewife ET Wong, one of the dozens who packed public galleries and stood outside court to support Wong.
“We don’t know what actions might break the law, what we say might break the law, what we write or what we draw. We just don’t know anymore.”
Wong has been in detention since November 2020, when he pleaded guilty to inciting and organising an unauthorised anti-government assembly during protests that roiled the Asian financial hub in 2019. His release had been due next January.
Beijing said the law was necessary to stabilise the city.
Wong was not an “enemy” but he needed to learn to respect the law and “understand his own country”, said Steve Li, chief superintendent of the national security department.
‘BLACK HAND’ ACCUSATION
Wong’s meetings with politicians from the United States, Europe and elsewhere, have drawn the wrath of Beijing, which calls him a “black hand” of foreign forces.
The offences took place between July 1 and November 23, 2020, a time when Hong Kong was facing a “very high risk” to national security and the rule of law, Tam said.
At a September hearing, the prosecution highlighted what it called an international media and political campaign by Demosisto, a now-disbanded political party of which Wong was a leader that sought to bring sanctions and other hostile actions on Hong Kong and China in 2019 and 2020.
Those efforts included lobbying trips to Washington DC and meetings with Nancy Pelosi, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a senator at the time.
The group at one point also backed a referendum on Hong Kong’s sovereignty.
Tam said Wong and Law took to the “international battleground” before the national security law went into effect but had persisted and “deliberately adapted” their activities to “further the offence”.
He said he took into account Wong’s guilty plea, his remorse and his education efforts in prison.
(Reporting by Greg Torode and Clare Jim in Hong Kong; additional reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Clarence Fernandez)
Comments