Joshua Wong pleads guilty to collaboration with foreign actors under Hong Kong's National Security Act

- Bye, bye, said Joshua Wong, waving to supporters and friends queuing to get a seat in the packed courtroom in Hong Kong.

Wearing a blue shirt, the well-known democracy activist had just pleaded guilty to collaborating with foreign actors. It is a violation of the national security law that Beijing imposed in Hong Kong in 2020 to quell the mass protests that raged in the international financial city in 2019.

Joshua Wong is already in prison for another offense against the National Security Act - for conspiring to overthrow the government, and was due to be released in 2027. But now he is being sentenced again. How long the sentence will be has not been determined, at most it could be life. By pleading guilty, Joshua Wong hopes for a lighter sentence. His lawyer Derek Chan appealed to the court to give 29-year-old Wong hope for the future.

Joshua Wong already as a teenager became the face of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. In 2014, he was one of the leaders of the so-called umbrella movement that sat on Hong Kong's main streets for 79 days straight. Their demand was more democracy in Hong Kong, which belongs to China.

Also then, Joshua Wong was imprisoned. When he was released in 2019, he was thrown into new mass protests in the financial city. When DN met him then, he was upbeat and hopeful. He called on the rest of the world to support Hong Kong and its struggle for democracy.

But China and the pro-Beijing government in Hong Kong cracked down on the protest movement, and in the national security law they have been given an effective tool to silence critical voices. The Communist Party of China justified the law by saying it was needed to return stability to Hong Kong. The critics believe that it is deliberately written vaguely in order to silence all opposition. Since its introduction, most organizations that worked for more democracy in Hong Kong have been disbanded and independent media have been shut down. Democracy activists have been imprisoned or fled abroad.

Human rights organizations are strongly critical of the verdict against Joshua Wong.

The authorities want to ensure that "the icon of democracy stays behind bars" and that Hong Kong's democracy movement is silenced, says Elaine Pearson, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.