Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong pleads guilty to new national security charges

Open this photo in gallery:Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong in Hong Kong in November, 2019.VIVEK PRAKASH/AFP/Getty ImagesJoshua Wong, one of the best-known former leaders of Hong Kong’s beleaguered pro-democracy movement, pleaded guilty Wednesday to new national security charges that could see him spend the next decade or more in prison. Mr. Wong came to prominence in the 2010s as a high school student activist, leading protests against a plan to impose “patriotic education” on children in the former British colony. He played a major role in mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014 and 2019, was the subject of a Netflix documentary and appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Beijing cracked down hard following the 2019 unrest, imposing a draconian national security law the following year that has essentially dismantled Hong Kong’s opposition movement. Mr. Wong was one of dozens of defendants convicted in 2024 for taking part in an election primary deemed an illegal conspiracy to undermine the government, and jailed for 56 months. He was due to be released early next year, before the authorities slapped him with new charges last June, accusing Mr. Wong – along with fellow activist Nathan Law, who went into exile in 2020 – of colluding with foreign forces to undermine Hong Kong by imposing economic sanctions. Similar charges were laid against former Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, who was found guilty of collusion in December and later sentenced to 22 years in prison. In both cases, most of the behaviour in question took place before the passage of the national security law – Mr. Lai was arrested in August, 2020, and Mr. Wong the following month – despite the authorities’ repeated assurances when it was introduced that the legislation would not be retroactive. Open this photo in gallery:Supporters hold signs during a press event to support Mr. Wong in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday.Chiang Ying-ying/The Associated PressEven before the national security law, Mr. Wong had spent much of the past decade behind bars on various charges. Since 2020, he has not fought the cases against him, apparently with the aim of securing a reduced punishment for a sentence many supporters always regarded as inevitable. His guilty plea Wednesday could see his time in prison extended for between three to 10 years, or up to a life sentence if the offence is deemed “of a grave nature,” though no such punishment has yet been handed out by a national security court. Sentencing will take place at a later date. Even had he been released next year, the experience of other former political prisoners suggests Mr. Wong’s life would have been extremely curtailed, constantly monitored by police and his movements restricted.While a handful of activists have managed to flee abroad after release from prison – including Agnes Chow, who started a political party with Mr. Wong, and jumped bail in Canada in 2023 – the authorities have significantly tightened policies around overseas travel since then. Frances Hui, a former member of Mr. Wong’s student group Scholarism now in exile with a bounty on her head, said the dual national security cases brought against Mr. Wong were “the culmination of a yearslong effort to silence one of the most recognizable voices of my generation and accustom the rest of the world to his disappearance.” “Joshua had seen all this coming,” she wrote Tuesday. “When he was banned from travelling in 2020, he warned that the authorities would keep stacking cases against him, restricting his movement and silencing his voice. Six years later, that warning has become the reality of his adulthood.” Mr. Wong’s case follows the conviction on national security charges of Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, organizers of Hong Kong’s annual candlelit vigil commemorating the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. They were accused of conspiring to achieve what prosecutors said was the “illegal goal” of ending one-party rule in China, a long-stated aim of a pro-democracy group led by the defendants. In a mitigation hearing last week, Ms. Chow, a former human rights barrister, said the case against her “boils down to saying that pursuing democracy is a crime.” A judge prevented her from reading her full statement, which was later uploaded online. In it, Ms. Chow said it was “entirely unpalatable that any political party can barter away a nation’s sovereignty, claim to represent the will of the people, appoint itself as the sole authority, and then insist that citizens are legally bound to uphold its self-fashioned throne.” “I would rather be a criminal than a person who betrays their conscience,” Ms. Chow said. “I will stand with all the people of Hong Kong who refuse to give up, and we will continue on this unfinished path to democracy.”