Joshua Wong Sent Back To Prison For Occupy Protest

Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong has been sent back to prison to finish a jail term he was given over the 2014 Occupy protests.

The Court of Appeal reduced his three-month punishment, however, to two months.

The Demosisto leader was jailed by the High Court in January last year after he and more than a dozen other activists either admitted or were found guilty of contempt of court for obstructing bailiffs clearing the Occupy protest site in Mong Kok.

Six days after the sentencing, Wong – who had pleaded guilty – was released on bail pending the outcome of this appeal against the sentence.

His lawyer had told the Court of Appeal that there was no evidence to show that the activist led others in defying the court injunction regarding the protest site, and he had simply spoken to bailiffs to try to ease the concerns of the other protesters.

But the lawyer for the Department of Justice argued that Wong, 22, had played a leading role in trying to prevent the protest being cleared and he had escalated the tension on the day.

In handing down the judgement, the three-judge panel said Wong's criminal contempt was "grave and contemptuous", and the only appropriate way of dealing with him was immediate imprisonment.

The judges said the activist's actions were a direct challenge to the court and must be met with a deterrent sentence.

They said any suggestion that he was being punished because of his status as a committed social activist was "entirely baseless and misconceived".

However, they said, proper weight should have been given to the fact that he was only 18 at the time.

Demosisto said it was disappointed with the ruling and that people who take part in non-violent civil disobedience should not be prosecuted

More than a dozen others activists had also been put on trial over the protest clearance but other than Wong, only Raphael Wong from the League of Social Democrats was given time in prison.

In August 2017, Joshua Wong was jailed along with fellow Occupy activists Nathan Law and Alex Chow after the government persuaded the Court of Appeal that the non-custodial punishments the trio had been given over the storming of Civic Square, just before Occupy, were far too lenient.

The Court of Final Appeal later quashed the prison terms.