Hong Kong sentences activist Joshua Wong to 10 more years
A Hong Kong court on Thursday sentenced pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong to 10 years in prison for colluding with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law, the BBC and AP report. Wong, 30, the teenage face of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, has already spent about six years in detention and had been due for release in January 2027; most of the new term will run after his current sentence. Prosecutors said he worked with exiled activist Nathan Law to urge foreign sanctions; the US consulate condemned the ruling, and China told other governments to respect Hong Kong's courts. Read at BBC News →
The trial and execution of Sir Thomas More
What happened then
On 1 July 1535 Sir Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor of England, was tried for high treason after refusing to swear the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church of England. A jury convicted him; he was beheaded on Tower Hill on 6 July.
What caused it
Henry's break with Rome, driven by his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and by a drive to control the English church, made loyalty to the king's new religious title a political test. More would serve the king in civil matters but would not affirm a claim he held false in conscience.
How it was resolved
Imprisoned in the Tower, he declined repeated chances to take the oath. At trial, Richard Rich's testimony and the judges' reading of the Treasons Act sealed the verdict; More spoke at the scaffold of dying “the king's good servant, and God's first.”
How it turned out
He was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1935 and is remembered across traditions as a statesman who put conscience above office. The case remains a Western landmark for the cost of demanding political-religious conformity — and for the courage, and the price, of refusal.
What the philosophers say
In an 1887 letter on the writing of history, Lord Acton warned that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and that great men are almost always bad men when judged by the moral law rather than by their success. He wanted historians to hold rulers — of every party and creed — to the same standard of truth and justice. Applied to a security state that stacks years onto a peaceful activist, Acton's rule cuts against whoever holds the file: the more unchecked the power to define “collusion” or “treason,” the more carefully free people should watch it. Conscience cases from More to today are where that maxim stops being a proverb and becomes a warning.
Sources: Acton Institute: Lord Acton Quote Archive · Wikipedia: John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Sources: British Library: The execution of Sir Thomas More · Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Thomas More (New Advent) · Wikipedia: Thomas More
Further reading: The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd