World Thinkers 2015: Joshua Wong

When he was 14 years old, Hong Kong schoolboy Joshua Wong founded Scholarism, a student activist group. The group has campaigned actively against the “Moral and National Education” since 2012, and in 2014 Wong, now 18, led a group of several hundred protestors into Hong Kong’s Civic Square. After months of protests on an unprecedented scale, Wong was charged with obstruction and prohibited from entering large parts of Mong Kok, a major business and retail district in Hong Kong. Police questioned him again in January 2015 for participating in “illegal gatherings”, but, even though he was released without charge, Wong, and other student leaders, were placed under formal investigation.

Further reading:

Scholarism official site

The Voice of a GenerationProfile of Wong and the Scholarism movement by Hannah Beech and Emily Rauhala.

Joshua Wong: the teenager who is the public face of the Hong Kong protests Co-founder of Scholarism, which kickstarted protests, has been campaigning since he was 15 but plays down talk of being hero, writes Tania Brannigan.