Hong Kong’s foremost democracy activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to four months in jail on Tuesday for unauthorized assembly and violating an anti-mask law.
Wong who is among 47 people charged under a national security law, has pleaded guilty to both charges, including taking part in and using a facial covering at an unauthorized assembly in October 2019 during the height of anti-government protests.
He is currently serving a 13-and-a-half-month sentence for organising and inciting an unlawful assembly near the city’s police headquarters in June 2019.
In October 2019, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam invoked colonial-era emergency powers for the first time in more than 50 years to enact a regulation banning face masks, which many pro-democracy protesters used to hide their identities from authorities.
Under the law, it was illegal to wear a mask at both lawful and unlawful assemblies and offenders faced a maximum one year in jail and a HK$25,000 fine.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise of wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms that pro-democracy activists say are being whittled away by Communist Party rulers in Beijing.
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