From school uniform to a 30-year-old prisoner: Joshua Wong has spent his youth behind bars

Joshua Wong entered Hong Kong’s High Court at 29, more than a decade after he first became known as a student activist in a school uniform. He pleaded guilty to a second case under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, adding uncertainty to a prison term that had been expected to end next year.

Wong first attracted attention in 2012, when he opposed the Hong Kong government’s proposed national education policy and helped form Scholarism with other students. Two years later, at 17, he became one of the defining young faces of the Umbrella Movement, standing among the yellow umbrellas on Hong Kong’s streets. Time magazine included him among its most influential teenagers.

In 2016, Wong and Nathan Law co-founded Demosisto, a political group that argued Hong Kong people should determine the city’s future. Wong later travelled overseas during the 2019 anti-extradition movement to seek international support. Demosisto dissolved after Beijing imposed the National Security Law in 2020.

His political life has since repeatedly intersected with courtrooms and prisons. Wong is serving 4 years and 8 months for his role in the 2020 pro-democracy primary-election case. In the new case, he admitted conspiring to collude with foreign forces, an offence that carries a possible life sentence. The court did not announce a sentence on the day of his plea.

Reuters noted that Wong wore a dark blue shirt and black-rimmed glasses, nodded and waved from the dock, then admitted the charge. A friend said he reads, learns guitar, exercises and tries to develop new interests in prison. Wong will turn 30 in little more than a month, after spending much of his youth in Hong Kong’s political upheaval and behind bars.