Hong Kong Protest Leader Joshua Wong Sentenced to Six Months in Jail Sentence effectively disqualifies activist from running for office in the next five yearsh By Natasha Khan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-protest-leader-joshua-wong-sentenced-to-six-months-in-jail-1502958935
HONG KONG—A student icon of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement was effectively disqualified from running for political office for five years after being jailed over protests in 2014 that drew world-wide attention.
The imprisonment of Joshua Wong, who became the skinny, bespectacled teenage face of the 79-day demonstrations demanding freer elections, is the latest move by authorities here to sweep away opponents of Beijing’s tightening control over the city. Since the protests, Mr. Wong has co-founded a new political party and has become a focal point for democracy campaigners, especially among the city’s youth.
The Court of Appeal sentenced Mr. Wong to six months in prison for taking part in an unlawful assembly in 2014, when protesters scaled security gates to access a square outside government headquarters, sparking what became known as the Occupy protests. Mr. Wong was originally sentenced to community service, which he completed, before the city’s Department of Justice filed a rare appeal, arguing that the sentence was too lenient. The harsher sentence means Mr. Wong is barred from running in local government elections until at least 2022.
Two other student leaders, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were sentenced to eight months and seven months in prison, respectively.
Hong Kong authorities are increasingly using the legal system to silence dissent, having successfully disqualified six other pro-democracy legislators in a separate case over oath-taking, damaging the bloc’s ability to veto legislation.
The moves pave the way for controversial laws to be enacted on national security, compulsory patriotic education for schoolchildren, and, for the first time, allowing mainland Chinese laws to be enforced in a new train station for a high-speed rail line connecting Hong Kong to the mainland.
“Beijing and the Hong Kong Secretary for Justice are licking their chops at the moment,’’ said Jerome A. Cohen, director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University. “Of course they will be “political prisoners … Their actions were political, and so was the government’s prosecution.’’
Mr. Wong and his two fellow student protest leaders “were convicted not because they exercised their civil liberties but because their relevant conduct in the protest broke the law,’’ a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in an email. “There is absolutely no basis to imply any political motive on the part of the Department of Justice in this case.’’
Mr. Wong, who turns 21 in October, rocketed to fame in his teens by organizing a 2012 rally that led the government to shelve plans to introduce a pro-China curriculum in Hong Kong schools.
During protests that paralyzed city streets in 2014, Mr. Wong was one of the first to camp out on highways and was a fiery voice at nightly rallies. That year, he was also on the cover of Time Magazine—the week he turned 18—as “The Face of Protest.”
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