HK's Joshua Wong faces jail after guilty plea over 2019 protest

Pro-democracy activists (from far left) Joshua Wong, Ivan Lam and Agnes Chow outside the West Kowloon Law Courts building in Hong Kong yesterday, before they were charged with inciting an unauthorised assembly during last year's anti-government prote
Pro-democracy activists (from far left) Joshua Wong, Ivan Lam and Agnes Chow outside the West Kowloon Law Courts building in Hong Kong yesterday, before they were charged with inciting an unauthorised assembly during last year's anti-government protests. They pleaded guilty and were remanded in custody. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

HONG KONG • Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was remanded in custody yesterday after pleading guilty to charges of organising and inciting an unauthorised assembly near the Hong Kong police headquarters during last year's anti-government protests.

Wong, who was just 17 years old when he became the face of the 2014 student-led Umbrella Movement democracy protests, could be jailed up to three years. The sentence will be delivered by Dec 2.

Before being taken away by security, Wong shouted: "Everyone hang in there! Add oil!" - a popular Cantonese expression of encouragement used during protests.

On Twitter afterwards, Wong said attention should be directed to the 12 Hong Kong people detained virtually incommunicado in China after being arrested at sea in August while trying to flee to Taiwan to escape charges related to last year's protests.

"I wish to pay tribute to our fellow activists who are about to face trials and prison, or...(are) in distress for not being able to return home: We're not fearless, but you are the braver ones," he said.

Wong did not plead guilty to a third charge of knowingly participating in an unauthorised assembly after the prosecution offered no evidence for it.

His long-time activist colleagues Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam, who also pleaded guilty to similar charges, were remanded in custody at the same trial.

Dozens of supporters outside the court chanted pro-democracy slogans and "Release Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam".

Wong was not a leading figure in last year's pro-democracy and anti-China protests, but his continued activism has drawn the wrath of Beijing, which sees him as a "black hand" of foreign forces.

He disbanded his pro-democracy group Demosisto in June, just hours after China's Parliament passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong, punishing anything Beijing considers to be subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life in prison.

Wong also faces charges of participating in an unauthorised assembly in October last year and on June 4 this year over a vigil commemorating the crackdown on protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Earlier this year, Wong was disqualified, along with 11 other pro-democracy politicians and activists, from running in a since-postponed election for the city's legislature. The young activist spent five weeks in jail last year for contempt of court, before being released on June 16, when protests were already in full swing.

The repeated arrests of Wong and other activists have drawn criticism from Western governments which say China is not fulfilling its obligation to allow Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, as agreed with former colonial master Britain when the city returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Meanwhile, a group of Western envoys to Hong Kong has condemned the erosion of media freedoms in the city, a situation they say has been worsened by Beijing's imposition of the "vaguely defined" national security law.

In a joint opinion piece in the South China Morning Post, the consuls-general for the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia warned of the rising risks for journalists operating in Hong Kong.

The city's journalists have been working through an extended bout of political turmoil since large, sometimes-violent protests broke out last year, followed by China's decision to impose the new security measures.

China denies curbing rights and freedom in the city, and, earlier this month, told a "handful of foreign politicians to grasp the trend of the times, keep their hands off China's internal affairs, stop meddling with Hong Kong affairs in any form and avoid going farther down the wrong path".

The Chinese foreign ministry also said the legal basis for the central government's administration of Hong Kong is the Constitution of China and Hong Kong's Basic Law.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG, XINHUA

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on November 24, 2020, with the headline HK's Joshua Wong faces jail after guilty plea over 2019 protest. Subscribe