By 2014, Wong, who was then at the forefront of a civil disobedience movement known as the “Umbrella Movement”, had already become one of the most recognisable faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
In 2016, he co-founded Demosisto with Law and Agnes Chow, an activist who is now also in exile.
But he often expressed discomfort at 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,” Wong told The Financial Times in November 2019.
Demosisto disbanded in 2020, the year Beijing introduced the controversial National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong.
Law left for the UK and continued his advocacy abroad, while Wong stayed on in Hong Kong and tried to run for a seat in its legislature – but was barred, with authorities citing his opposition to the NSL as one of the reasons.
Meanwhile, the court cases against Wong were stacking up.
On 23 November 2020, he pleaded guilty to several charges related to his involvement in protests outside the Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019.
Then came the NSL charges. While still in prison in February 2021, Wong was among 47 people charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion”. The group became known as the Hong Kong 47 and remains the largest prosecution so far under the NSL.
Wong was still serving his 56-month sentence for the subversion conviction when he was charged with collusion under the NSL last year.
On 22 November 2020, the day before he pleaded guilty to the protest charges, Wong wrote in a post on Instagram addressed to “the people of Hong Kong”: “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.
“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.”
The harshest NSL sentence thus far had been handed to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was jailed for 20 years, also for colluding with foreign forces.
