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Protest leader Joshua Wong leaves Hong Kongs high court in a prison van after his sentencing. Photograph: STRINGER/Reuters

For Hong Kongs embattled democracy movement the 20th anniversary of the UKs handover to China has been nothing short of an annus horribilis.

But on Thursday afternoon, just minutes after the former British colonys high court had transformed him into one of the citys first prisoners of conscience, Joshua Wong struck a decidedly an upbeat tone.

See you soon, the 20-year-old protest leader tweeted after he and two friends, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were jailed for their role in launching 2014s umbrella movement, a historic 79-day occupation that drew hundreds of thousands of young people out on to the streets.

For Wong, who was sentenced to six months behind bars, the ruling is a particularly heavy blow. The student activist, who found fame as Hong Kongs teenage face of protest during the 2014 demonstrations, had hoped to run for political office after turning 21 in October. This weeks sentence has scuppered those dreams for at least five years.

It has also delivered a body blow to Hong Kongs wider democracy movement, already reeling from the disqualification of four its lawmakers from parliament and the growing sense that the international community has abandoned it for fear of upsetting Beijing.

Many supporters in the court were crying because we didnt want to accept this result, said Ray Chan, a pro-democracy politician and Hong Kongs first openly gay legislator, who was among those to turn out in support of Wong, Law and Chow.

The sentences constituted an attempt to intimidate young Hong Kongers who were considering taking to the streets to protest against Beijings refusal to grand them genuine democracy.

But for Chan, and many others within the pro-democracy camp, the message is: we will not be cowed.

It cannot make all of us keep quiet, Chan vowed. We still have hope because we have so many young people who are prepared to sacrifice their freedom to fight for democracy for our society.

I want to make it more positive - a few months is not too long a period, Chan said of his jailed friends. Never give up!

Benedict Rogers, a British human rights activist who knows all three of the campaigners, said he could also see a silver-lining to the storm clouds that have been gathering over Hong Kongs democracy movement.

Rogers decried the trios imprisonment as a travesty of justice. They are absolutely delightful, he said. All three of them are among the most intelligent, bright, thoughtful and fun people that I can think of and the idea that they are guilty of a criminal act is absurd.

[But] if anything is to galvanise the international community into realising that Hong Kongs basic freedoms and one country, two systems are now really on a knife edge if not already dead then it is the sentencing of three young men who have committed no crime apart from a political crime.

In a statement, Wongs party, Demosist, accused Chinas president, Xi Jinping, of eroding the civil and political freedoms that Hong Kong was promised after its return to Beijings control and lamented the immense humiliation the government had inflicted upon their struggle for change.

But Rogers said that by turning the three men into political prisoners, authorities were giving them even greater legitimacy and boosting the very cause they were trying to undermine. When you look throughout history at people who have become iconic figures, theyve often done so because of spending periods of time in prison, he said. One only has to think of Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi, and countless others.

Eddie Chu, a pro-democracy legislator, was another who refused to be downbeat. Chu accused the Communist party of attempting to wipe out a generation of potential candidates by having those who might seek election to oppose its rule thrown in jail.

But he insisted the tactic would fail: Hong Kong people will not be defeated.

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Hong Kong jailings could lend democracy cause greater legitimacy - The Guardian