World

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong sentenced to 10 more years in prison

By Linda Ikeji 5 November 2026, 12:18 pm

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong has been sentenced to 10 more years in prison under a Beijing-imposed national security law.

Back in 2025, Wong was charged with conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security, and he pleaded guilty to the offense earlier this year.

The 30-year-old is already serving a four-year, eight-month prison term for the city’s biggest national security case linked to an unofficial primary.

Before being prosecuted in the latest case, Wong had been expected to be freed in January 2027.

Judge William Tam ruled that Wong’s offense was of a grave nature and that he was a mastermind of the conspiracy.

Tam said Wong and fellow activist Nathan Law continued to conspire together to have direct contact and collude with senior officials or institutions of foreign governments, or other external elements, and to call for their adverse interference against China and Hong Kong.

The judge pointed to the US revocation of the city’s different treatment as a special administrative region and the sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials, saying these were the kind of sanctions or hostile measures Wong and Law had called for.

“The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime committed,” he wrote. “It is also necessary for this court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts together with others to collude with foreign forces…and to serve the imperative of general deterrence.”

Tam said he considered a 13-year prison sentence as a starting point but reduced it because of Wong’s guilty plea and mitigation.

Tam said Wong would serve the remaining two months of the sentence for his first national security conviction concurrently with the new sentence.

In a statement obtained by The Associated Press, Wong wrote in prison that his political participation was never driven by hatred and he bears no resentment toward the Chinese or Hong Kong governments, adding that he never advocated Hong Kong independence.

He said he thought he was acting within the law, but only later realized his judgment was wrong.

He said during his nearly six years in prison, he enrolled in university courses and read hundreds of books.

He said he devoted himself to becoming a more responsible and compassionate person, and he hoped he’d be able to look back on this period as a trial that strengthened him.