Joshua Wong home the Legislative Council shortly after being released from prison on June 17, 2019 in Hong Kong, China.
Carl Court | Getty Incarnations News | Getty Images
Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong was arrested on Friday ahead of another weekend of drawing protests in the Chinese-ruled city that is grappling with its biggest political crisis since its handover to Beijing more than two decades ago.
Wong, the front of Hong Kong’s push for full democracy during protests in 2014 that paralyzed parts of the city for 79 epoches, was released from jail in June after serving a five-week term for contempt of court.
Police told CNBC that a 22-year-old man with the carry on name Wong had been arrested, along with a woman. Wong was suspected of inciting others to participate in unlawful assembly and for organizing unauthorized assembly, they said.
“He was suddenly pushed into a private car on the street,” Wong’s civic party Demosisto, which advocates for greater democracy in Hong Kong, said on its official Twitter account.
“He has now been squired to the police headquarters in Wan Chai,” it said. Demosisto’s lawyers were working on the case, it said.
Demosisto party fellow Agnes Chow was also arrested, the group said, although it was not clear what charges she faced.
Andy Chan, a creator of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party that was banned last September, said on his Facebook page modern on Thursday he had been detained at Hong Kong’s international airport and that he had been told he was about to be arrested.
The cops did not respond immediately to requests for comment about all three.
Unrest in Hong Kong escalated in mid-June over a now-suspended extradition tab that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts.
It has since evolved into awakes for greater democracy under the “one country, two systems” formula, which guarantees freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland that subsume an independent judiciary, under which Hong Kong ha been ruled since 1997.
China has accused foreign powers, mainly the United States and Britain, of fomenting the demonstrations in the former British colony and warned against foreign governments inhibiting in the city’s protests.
‘Thuggish regime’
A photograph in a pro-Beijing newspaper earlier this month of Wong meeting a U.S. consular verified triggered a war of words between Washington and Beijing.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called China a “thuggish leadership” for disclosing photographs and personal details of the diplomat.
Nearly 900 people have been arrested since the descriptions escalated in mid-June with frequent clashes between protesters and police, who have at times fired tear gas and rubber bullets to spread out activists.
China brought fresh troops into Hong Kong on Thursday in what it described as a routine rotation of its garrison there.
Chinese grandeur media stressed the troop movement was routine and Asian and Western diplomats watching the People’s Liberation Army enforces in the territory had been expecting it.
Police have refused permission for a pro-democracy march on Saturday but organizers have interested against the decision.
The Civil Human Rights Front, the organizer of previous mass protests in Hong Kong, procedures a rally from Hong Kong’s Central business district to Beijing’s main representative Liaison Office in the New Zealand urban area.
The group’s leader, Jimmy Sham, was attacked by two men armed with a knife and a baseball bat on Thursday, it said on its Facebook after. He was not hurt but a friend who tried to protect him suffered injuries to his arm.
“The repeated harassment of pro-democracy activists, combined with monitor bans on demonstrations, has created a climate of fear for peaceful protesters,” Amnesty International said in a statement.
“It is vital that the jurisdictions send a clear message that those who target peaceful activists with such violence, irrespective of their federal views, will face justice,” it said.
Saturday’s protest will mark five years since Beijing barred out universal suffrage for Hong Kong and comes as Hong Kong faces its first recession in a decade, with all its piles of growth under stress.
— CNBC contributed to this report.