Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong ‘mentally prepared’ for jail after court imprisons protesters in separate case
Demosisto secretary general says he expects similar penalty to 13 demonstrators who had community service changed to jail terms by appeal court
Prosecutors have also requested a beefed-up punishment for Wong and two others, with a ruling expected on Thursday. The secretary general of pro-democracy political party Demosisto was originally sentenced to community service after being convicted of illegal assembly.
Speaking on a radio programme on Wednesday, Wong said he thought he would get a new punishment comparable to those meted out to the 13 protesters, who were jailed for between eight and 13 months by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday. Prosecutors had appealed against the group’s original sentence of 80 to 150 hours community service from a lower court in 2016.
The 13 stormed the Legislative Council complex during a protest over a development project in Hong Kong’s northeastern New Territories in 2014.
“We did not think the sentences for the [protest over the] development project in northeastern New Territories would be more than a year as sentencing for similar cases was usually a fine, community service or three weeks to three months’ jail,” he said.
“It was such a big change, so I can only remind myself to be prepared.”
The judges explained on Tuesday that there was a need to hand down a deterrent sentence against those involved in the development project protest for the sake of social order. Critics have argued that the project would leave people homeless.
Wong added that he believed more young people would be sent to jail in coming days.
Speaking on the same programme, Lester Shum, former deputy secretary general of the Federation of Students, said he was disappointed with the sentencing for the northeastern New Territories case, adding that he thought the Court of Appeal judges should have considered the overall situation instead of just the moment.
“The judges’ views and questions did not consider what was happening in society or what the government was doing, but looked only at [the] action at the moment and said [the protesters] were using violence to harm others,” he said.
Shum added that the case would be a landmark one, setting a new standard for sentencing for cases involving social movements, and would have a huge impact on such movements in the future.
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They said that the original lenient sentencing sent the wrong message.
