Joshua Wong Jailed for 10 Years in Hong Kong National Security Case

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong has been jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to colluding with foreign forces under the city’s sweeping national security law. The sentence, handed down on Thursday 5 November 2026, means one of the best-known faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement will spend almost another decade behind bars — just as he was due to walk free.

Wong, who turned 30 last month, had already spent nearly six years in jail. He was due to be released in January 2027 after serving a separate sentence for subversion. Instead, the Hong Kong High Court has now added a second, far longer term on top of it.

The case has been watched closely around the world. Supporters say the sentence is cruel and unjust, and part of a wider crackdown that has silenced dissent in Hong Kong. The authorities say the law is needed to protect national security and keep the city stable.

This article explains what the court decided, what Wong was accused of, who he is, and what happens next.

What the court decided

High Court Judge William Tam sentenced Wong to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces. The charge was brought under Hong Kong’s national security law, which Beijing imposed on the city in 2020.

“The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime,” Judge Tam told a packed courtroom as he delivered the sentence. The maximum penalty for the offence is life in prison, so the 10-year term is shorter than the harshest sentence the law allows — but it is still one of the longest handed down under the law so far.

“It is also necessary for the court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts with others to collude with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security,” the judge added.

The judge started from a sentence of 13 years and reduced it to 10, taking into account Wong’s guilty plea, his remorse, and his efforts to educate himself while in prison.

Only a small part of the new sentence will run at the same time as the one Wong is already serving. Just two months and two days of the 10-year term will be served concurrently with his existing sentence. That means that once his current term ends, he still faces close to another full decade in prison.

Wong arrived in court wearing a dark blue long-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers and black-rimmed glasses. He looked slimmer than in his previous public appearances, according to the BBC. Flanked by three guards, he repeatedly nodded to the packed public gallery and took notes as the judge read out the reasons for the sentence.

Outside the court, dozens of Hongkongers had queued for hours hoping to get a seat in the gallery, and there was a heavy police presence.

What Wong was accused of

Prosecutors said Wong conspired with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, bodies and individuals outside China to impose sanctions or blockades, or to take other hostile action against the governments of Hong Kong and China.

The activities at the centre of the case took place between 1 July and 23 November 2020. The judge said that was a time when Hong Kong faced a “very high risk” to national security and the rule of law.

At a hearing in September, prosecutors described an international media and political campaign by Demosisto — a now-disbanded pro-democracy party of which Wong was a leader — that sought to bring sanctions and other hostile actions on Hong Kong and China in 2019 and 2020.

Those efforts included lobbying trips to Washington DC and meetings with Nancy Pelosi, then the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, and Marco Rubio, who was a US senator at the time and is now the US Secretary of State. The group also, at one point, backed a referendum on Hong Kong’s sovereignty.

Judge Tam said Wong and Law had taken their campaign to the “international battleground” before the national security law came into force, but had kept going afterwards and had “deliberately adapted” their activities to continue the offence.

Wong pleaded guilty to the charge in September 2026. He was charged with the new offence in June 2025, while he was still in prison serving his earlier sentence.

Who is Joshua Wong?

Joshua Wong was born in Hong Kong in October 1996, the son of an IT professional father and a homemaker mother. He was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, which made school difficult for him. But from a young age he was quick to challenge rules he thought were wrong. At secondary school, he rallied classmates on Facebook to protest against the high prices of canteen lunches.

His activism began in earnest when he was still a teenager. In 2011, aged just 14, he co-founded Scholarism, a pro-democracy student activist group that quickly grew in size and influence. The following year, the group rallied more than 100,000 people to protest against Hong Kong’s plans to introduce mandatory “patriotic education” in schools. The authorities backed down.

By 2014, Wong was at the forefront of a civil disobedience movement known as the Umbrella Movement, and he had become one of the most recognisable faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The movement, named after the umbrellas protesters used to shield themselves from pepper spray and tear gas, brought large parts of central Hong Kong to a standstill for weeks as demonstrators demanded freer elections.

In 2016, he co-founded the pro-democracy political party Demosisto with Nathan Law and Agnes Chow, an activist who is now also in exile. Wong often said he was uncomfortable being labelled a “protest leader”.

“We have a lot of facilitators in this movement and I’m one of them… Instead of having a top-down command, we now have a bottom-up command hub,” he told the Financial Times in November 2019.

Demosisto disbanded in 2020, the year Beijing introduced the national security law in Hong Kong. Law left for the UK and continued his advocacy from abroad, while Wong stayed in Hong Kong and tried to run for a seat in the city’s legislature. He was barred from standing, with the authorities citing his opposition to the national security law as one of the reasons.

A second sentence on top of the first

Wong’s new 10-year sentence does not stand alone. It comes on top of a prison term he was already serving, and it is the latest in a long line of court cases against him.

On 23 November 2020, he pleaded guilty to charges linked to his involvement in protests outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019, including inciting and organising an unauthorised assembly. He has been in detention ever since.

Then, in February 2021, while still in prison, Wong was among 47 people charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion”. The group became known as the Hong Kong 47, and the case remains the largest prosecution so far under the national security law. Wong was sentenced to four years and eight months — 56 months — for the subversion conviction, and he was due to be freed in January 2027.

He is the only person among those convicted in that case to have been charged a second time under the security law.

The day before he pleaded guilty to the 2019 protest charges, on 22 November 2020, Wong wrote a message to the people of Hong Kong on Instagram. “To be honest, I have never had much faith in Hong Kong’s politics, but I have every confidence in the people of Hong Kong,” he wrote. “Even as political power now poses a comprehensive challenge to the resilience of our civil society, I believe the people of Hong Kong will, as always, find a way to see things through.”

What Wong said in court

During the mitigation phase of his trial — the part of the proceedings where the defence argues for a lighter sentence — Wong spoke about his own actions and beliefs.

“I have never advocated Hong Kong independence, nor have I ever promoted the ‘collapse of China’ or regime change,” he said. “I have also never received foreign funding or spent money to hire foreign political consultants.”

He also told the court that he had later realised he had been mistaken in his belief that his activities were within the bounds of the law.

His words did not spare him a long sentence. But the judge did take his guilty plea, his remorse and his efforts to study in prison into account when reducing the starting point of 13 years down to 10.

Reactions: grief, anger and defiance

The sentence drew strong reactions from both sides — from Wong’s friends and supporters, from human rights groups, and from the Hong Kong authorities.

Frances Hui, Wong’s friend and fellow activist, who is now based in the United States, told the BBC she was “heartbroken” and “outraged” by the verdict.

“Today’s sentencing is not just about Joshua. It is part of a broader political crackdown that seeks to rewrite a chapter of Hong Kong’s history and erase the contributions of an entire generation who believed they could shape the future of their city,” she said.

Human Rights Watch described the ruling as “cruel and unjust”. Its Asia director, Elaine Pearson, said: “To keep Hong Kong society subdued, and to reduce the chance of an international outcry, the Hong Kong government appears to have adopted the tactic of stacking charges against influential pro-democracy leaders.”

Outside the court, supporters who had queued for hours to attend the hearing spoke of fear. “These harsh sentences have left many Hong Kong people deeply fearful,” said a housewife named ET Wong, one of the dozens who packed the public galleries and stood outside the court to support him. “We don’t know what actions might break the law, what we say might break the law, what we write or what we draw. We just don’t know anymore.”

The authorities took a very different view. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, John Lee, said Wong and Law were “among the primary culprits responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability”.

Steve Li, chief superintendent of the national security department, said Wong was not an “enemy” but that he needed to learn to respect the law and “understand his own country”. Beijing has said the national security law was necessary to stabilise the city after the protests of 2019.

The wider crackdown in Hong Kong

Wong’s case is part of a much bigger story. Since Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020, following months of sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019, hundreds of campaigners and ordinary Hongkongers have been arrested under it.

Critics say the far-reaching law has silenced dissent. Opposition parties have disbanded, independent media outlets have closed, and many activists have gone into exile. The authorities argue that the law is needed to maintain stability, and deny that it has weakened the city’s cherished autonomy.

Wong is far from the only prominent figure to receive a long sentence under the law. The harshest sentence so far was handed to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong’s most vocal critic of China, who was jailed for 20 years in February 2026 for colluding with foreign forces and sedition, after a landmark trial that drew international criticism.

The cases are being closely watched by international human rights groups and by governments in Western and Asian countries that are tracking how the national security law is being applied in the former British colony. Hong Kong was handed back to China by Britain in 1997 under an arrangement meant to guarantee its freedoms and way of life for 50 years.

For Wong personally, the new sentence is a heavy blow. He first became known to the world as a teenager in a school uniform, leading protests. He is now 30, has spent nearly six years behind bars, and faces almost another decade in prison. He entered prison at 23 and, under this sentence, would still be in his late thirties by the time he is free.

What happens next

No appeal has been reported yet. Wong’s lawyers have not said publicly whether he will challenge the sentence, and it is not yet clear when — or whether — he might do so.

What is clear is that the release Wong and his supporters had been expecting in January 2027 will not happen. With only two months and two days of the new 10-year term running at the same time as his existing sentence, he now faces close to another full decade behind bars.

The case is also likely to deepen the debate over Hong Kong’s national security law, both inside the city and abroad. Supporters of the law will point to the guilty plea and the court’s reasoning. Critics will point to the length of the sentence, the fact that the charges were brought years after the events in question, and the way new charges were laid while Wong was already in prison.

For now, one of Hong Kong’s most famous activists remains behind bars — and will stay there for a long time to come.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Joshua Wong?

Joshua Wong is a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who first became known as a teenager. He co-founded the student group Scholarism in 2011, was a leading figure in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and co-founded the political party Demosisto in 2016. He has been in detention since November 2020.

Why was Joshua Wong jailed for 10 years?

He pleaded guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s national security law. Prosecutors said he worked with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries and bodies to impose sanctions or blockades on Hong Kong and China between July and November 2020.

When was Joshua Wong due to be released before this sentence?

He was due to be freed in January 2027, after serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion in the Hong Kong 47 case. The new 10-year sentence runs almost entirely after that term ends, with only two months and two days served at the same time.

What is Hong Kong’s national security law?

It is a law imposed by Beijing in 2020 after months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019. It criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. The maximum penalty for the most serious offences is life in prison. Critics say it has silenced dissent; the authorities say it was needed to restore stability.

Who else has received a long sentence under the law?

The longest sentence so far went to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was jailed for 20 years in February 2026 for colluding with foreign forces and sedition.

Sources

• Reuters, “Hong Kong court sentences activist Joshua Wong to 10 years on national security charge”, 5 November 2026 — https://northlandnewsradio.com/2026/11/04/hong-kong-court-sentences-activist-joshua-wong-to-10-years-on-national-security-charge/
• Reuters (via BusinessWorld), “Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong gets 10 years in jail on national security charge”, 5 November 2026 — https://bworldonline.com/world/2026/11/05/791680/hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-gets-10-years-in-jail-on-national-security-charge/
• BBC News, “Joshua Wong, face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, jailed for 10 years”, 5 November 2026 — full text verified via the BBC report as republished at https://mamosmedia.com/joshua-wong-face-of-hong-kongs-pro-democracy-protests-jailed-for-10-years/

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.