Joshua Wong jailed for 10 years for foreign collusion
Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the national security law.
Joshua Wong, one of the best-known faces of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison under the city's national security law.
Wong, 30, pleaded guilty in September to conspiring with other activists, including the self-exiled Nathan Law, to collude with foreign countries or external forces. The judge described the offense as grave, which under the law carries a minimum sentence of 10 years.
It is Wong's second conviction under the national security law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 after months of mass protests the year before. He has been behind bars since late 2020 and was already serving a sentence in a separate subversion case. A small part of the new term will overlap with that sentence.
Wong rose to fame as a teenager during student protests in 2014 and became an international symbol of the push for greater democracy in the city. Law now lives outside Hong Kong.
Hong Kong and Chinese officials say the security law restored stability after the unrest. Critics, including Western governments and rights groups, say it has been used to crush dissent and has ended the freedoms Hong Kong was promised when Britain returned it to China in 1997.
This summary is original reporting by tehworldnews, written after checking the facts against several major international news outlets and official statements.