Prominent activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) yesterday asked for a lesser sentence in court after he earlier pleaded guilty in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case.
Wong was one of 47 activists charged in 2021 under a Beijing-imposed National Security Law with conspiracy to commit subversion for their involvement in an unofficial primary.
The activists were accused of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and topple the territory’s leader by aiming to win a legislative majority and using it to block budgets indiscriminately.
Photo: AP
Wong and 44 others admitted their liability or were convicted by the court. They could be sentenced to life in prison, though those who pleaded guilty have a better chance of receiving shorter sentences. Their mass prosecution dealt a severe blow to the territory’s once-thriving pro-democracy movement.
Wong waved at the public gallery after he walked into the courtroom.
Former Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai (胡志偉), former pro-democracy lawmaker Jeremy Tam (譚文豪) and activist Tam Tak-chi (譚得志) were among the five other activists who also appeared in court.
Wong’s lawyer, Marco Li (李國威), said his client should be considered an “active participant,” because he neither organized nor assisted in the unofficial primary.
The security law calls for active participants to face a jail term of between three and 10 years.
Li said Wong hoped that he could part with his past history and would be able to reform himself after serving his sentence.
He suggested the judges offer his client a one-third reduction of sentence given his guilty plea.
Wong first became a household name in Hong Kong as a teenager in 2012 for leading protests against the implementation of national education in the territory’s schools.
In 2014, he rose to fame as one of the student leaders in the Occupy Movement, during which demonstrators occupied streets for 79 days and brought traffic in some areas to a standstill, demanding direct elections for Hong Kong’s leader.
In the 2019 leaderless movement, Wong helped drum up overseas support for the protests. His activism resulted in Beijing calling him as an advocate of Hong Kong independence who had “begged for interference” from foreign forces.
When the security law was enacted on June 30, 2020, “Demosisto,” a political party he cofounded, was disbanded.
The mitigation hearings for the 45 convicted defendants are expected to continue until early next month and sentencing will come at a later date.
The National Security Law authorizes a range of sentences depending on the seriousness of the offense and the defendant’s role in it, going from under three years for the least serious to 10 years to life in prison for people convicted of “grave” offenses.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS