EDITORIAL: Joshua Wong’s fate is a warning

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear,” democracy activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) wrote, quoting 1 John 4:18, in a letter to a friend as he prepared for his release in January next year. Wong, who turned 30 last month, was set to complete a four-year, eight-month jail term for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the landmark “Hong Kong 47” case, in which 45 prominent democracy campaigners were convicted over their roles in an unofficial primary election and sentenced to up to 10 years in jail in 2024.

However, after spending more than 2,170 days behind bars, he was on Thursday last week sentenced to 10 years in jail after pleading guilty in September to “conspiring to collude with foreign forces,” a charge made in June last year. It was his second conviction under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Wong, who had been detained since late 2020 when he was 24, is likely to remain behind bars until 2036, meaning he would have spent nearly 16 years in prison by the time he turns 40.

The sentence, the second-highest since the law took effect, is undoubtedly devastating to someone who was looking forward to starting a new life and seeing his friends and family again in a couple of months. Standing in court for his eighth sentencing, Wong was seen sighing, frowning and shaking his head, while some in the gallery broke into tears or gasped as they heard the initial 13-year sentence starting point.

“Unlike my peers born in the 1990s, I was unable to start a family of my own or enter the workforce. Instead, I could only watch the years pass inside a stark cell,” he wrote in his mitigation letter.

What has he done to be deprived of the most precious time in his adulthood? The answer, as he wrote in his letters, lies in his love for his comrades, his community and Hong Kong. His devotion to democracy movements dates back to 2011, when he founded Scholarism, a student activist group which rallied more than 100,000 people to protest against the Hong Kong government’s plans to implement mandatory “patriotic education”; the government backed down.

In 2014, his group helped organize a class boycott that led into the “Umbrella movement,” a 79-day protest calling for universal suffrage. In 2016, he founded Demosisto, a political party that advocated for Hong Kong’s right to determine its own future, but the group was disbanded in 2020.

His pursuit of freedom and democracy made him “not a stranger before the court,” as the judge put it in the ruling. Wong was convicted in six criminal cases on eight charges ranging from unlawful assembly offenses to subversion and collusion with foreign forces under the National Security Law over his roles in the 2014 Occupy Central protests, the 2019 anti-extradition bill movement and his international lobbying work in 2020.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) crackdown on Hong Kong has not been limited to prison terms, but also includes humiliating televised confessions.

Former Apple Daily publisher Cheung Kim-hung (張劍虹), who was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison for “colluding with foreign forces,” appeared on the CCP-controlled Phoenix TV, praising China’s development during a government-organized tour of Shenzhen. He said he was “very excited” and “extremely proud” to experience “how big and powerful” China is. Cheung, a key witness for the prosecution in the national security trial of the newspaper’s founder, Jimmy Lai (黎智英), was reportedly granted early release along with three other prosecution witnesses.

It was not the first time a person convicted under the National Security Law appeared on television to express remorse. In 2023, Tong Ying-kit (唐英傑) — the first person to be convicted under the law and who was sentenced to a total of nine years in prison — appeared in a police-supported TV show, saying he had been influenced by the social atmosphere when he committed his offense. He was reportedly released more than two years early.

It is incomprehensible that some Taiwanese, who stand on the free soil that countless people fought to protect with blood and tears, cannot wait to show how much they love China by flattering the CCP in the same way as those who might have been pressured to do so in Hong Kong. Taiwanese should remember Wong’s fearlessness and the humiliation many others suffered. They should grasp their own destiny with every choice they make to protect future generations from the CCP’s tyranny.