Here’s a suggestion for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, which opens its nominating season next month: Look to the three young men who earlier today became Hong Kong’s first prisoners of conscience.

In 2014, the courageous trio helped lead what become known as the Umbrella Movement — an enormous political protest defending Hong Kong’s freedoms from an increasingly aggressive Beijing. Like Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi and so many dissidents that came before them, the men were hit with a bogus charge (“unlawful assembly”), were found guilty and served out their punishments last year.

But today, Hong Kong’s Department of Justice decided that those penalties were too lenient.

Joshua Wong, who burst onto the city’s political scene at 14 years old and is the public face of its democracy movement, was sentenced to six months. Nathan Law and Alex Chow were sentenced to seven and eight months, respectively. All three had budding political careers, but these new sentences bar them from running for public office for the next five years.

As Mr. Wong put it to a reporter from The New York Times before his sentencing: “The government wanted to stop us from running in elections and directly suppress our movement.” He added: “There’s no longer rule of law in Hong Kong. It’s rule by law.” Just so.