Joshua Wong. Photo: Tom Grundy /HKFP. With permission.
Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was arrested and charged with foreign collusion on June 6, 2025, while he was serving a sentence for conspiracy to subvert the state for participating in the primaries of the subsequently postponed 2021 Legislative Council Election.
Wong has spent over 1,600 days in custody since November 23, 2020, after he was remanded for organizing an unauthorized assembly against police violence during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. While he was in prison, he faced more charges and jail sentences for violating an anti-mask law during a 2019 protest, participating in the unlawful assembly of the 2020 Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary, and a subversion charge for running pro-democracy primaries along with 46 activists. Wong was expected to be released in early 2027.
However, ahead of the sixth anniversary of the 2019 pro-democracy protests, Wang was arrested in Hong Kong's Stanley prison and brought to the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on June 6, 2025.
According to the charge sheet, he was accused of conspiring with exiled activist Nathan Law and “other persons unknown” between July 1 and November 23, 2020, to request foreign countries, organizations, or individuals based overseas to impose sanctions, blockades, or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China. He was also charged with conspiring to request foreign powers or organizations to seriously disrupt the formulation and implementation of laws and policies in Hong Kong and China.
Wong could face a maximum life sentence, and the case’s next hearing will be on August 8, 2025.
The crime of foreign collusion, along with state subversion, terrorism, and secession, was introduced to Hong Kong under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law (NSL) on June 30, 2020.
While Wong was one of the key figures urging the US government to impose sanctions on Hong Kong officials who were responsible for the violent crackdown of the 2019 protests in early 2020, the NSL is not retroactive. On the same day of its enactment, Wong, along with Agnes Chow and Nathan Law, announced their resignation from Demosistō, the political group they founded. Soon after their resignation, Demosistō also announced the suspension of all its operations. Two days later, on July 2, 2020, Nathan Law announced that he had left Hong Kong.
Nathan Law has remained active in lobbying foreign governments to speak out against human rights violations in Hong Kong. He was accused of incitement to secession and foreign collusion, and has been listed on the Hong Kong police's 19-person wanted list.
Wong’s arrest was viewed as a disturbing sign of Hong Kong’s deteriorating human rights conditions and commitment to the rule of law. Veteran human rights researcher Sophie Richardson wrote on X:
It’s now disturbingly easy to see that #HongKong authorities will continue to make up laws and purported violations of those to keep #JoshuaWong and other pro-democracy voices in jail for as long as suits #China #XiJinping. https://t.co/9NUszbN1Om
— Sophie Richardson (@SophieDRich) June 6, 2025
Amnesty International’s China Director, Sarah Brooks, believed the prosecution intended to build up a chilling effect on civil society:
Hong Kong’s National Security Law is turning five years old at the end of the month, and these new charges against Joshua Wong show that its capacity to be used by the Hong Kong authorities to threaten human rights in the city is as potent and present as ever… This latest charge against him underscores the authorities’ fear of prominent dissidents and shows the lengths they will go to keep them behind bars for as long as possible — in so doing, continuing a chilling effect on civic activism in the city.
Reportedly, the Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, will visit Hong Kong for the fifth anniversary of the enactment of NSL.
