First came the fire. Then came the political crackdown.
In the week and a half since a deadly blaze swept through several high-rise buildings in Hong Kong — killing more than 150 people — the Beijing-backed government has worked to squash public calls for accountability and tamp down discussion of the tragedy.
A former district councillor was arrested Sunday for Facebook posts about the fire. Police called in organizers of a Tuesday news conference of civil society leaders about the fire — forcing them to cancel the event. The government this week banned the operation of two pro-democracy political groups.
Officials are particularly concerned about quelling dissent in the run-up to legislative elections Sunday, analysts say, even though all candidates are pro-Beijing “patriots.”
This suppression campaign is the latest evidence of Hong Kong’s transformation from a semiautonomous territory with a vibrant political scene and civil society to a city tightly controlled by Beijing.
It also underscores how the Hong Kong government — in the wake of enormous 2019 pro-democracy protests and the passing of a sweeping national security law the following year — increasingly uses Beijing’s playbook in responding to crises like this one that could mobilize large groups of aggrieved people.
The targets of the crackdown have been left reeling — and confounded by their city’s metamorphosis.
“I shared articles that moved me and had no intention to test national security’s limits. I really have no idea where their red line lies,” said Kenneth Cheung, the former district councillor and activist who was arrested this week for his Facebook posts, in an interview. “Previously only public figures or people active in politics were targeted, but in the last couple of weeks, even a volunteer delivering relief supplies was detained. Now a sense of white terror is spreading, and my friends are more worried about me.”
The fire came just two weeks before legislative council elections. Though 2021 electoral reforms effectively wiped out any pro-democracy opposition, analysts say that the Hong Kong government doesn’t want to risk of any outpourings of emotion.
“There’s a strong incentive for the government to work to cool down the public grievance,” said Eric Lai, a Hong Kong expert at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law in Washington. “They may be anxious how the public would use the legislative council election as a platform to express their anger.”
Voters’ ability to use the election to air discontent is limited, however: even publicly advocating for an election boycott is now illegal in Hong Kong.
Some experts expect that residents will boycott the vote over the fire, even as officials have attempted to boost turnout. Social workers will be deployed to escort fire survivors to polling stations, the government announced Tuesday.
Anger has mounted about the fire, which burned for nearly two days in Tai Po district, with some accusing the government of emergency response and regulatory oversights, as well as failing to respond to resident complaints about safety issues before the fire.
The government has taken some action, announcing Monday that unsafe construction netting was responsible for the blaze and accusing contractors of concealing the nature of materials. The police have arrested 15 people from the various construction companies on suspicion of manslaughter, and six people over allegedly misreporting the condition of the complex’s fire prevention system.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the establishment of a review committee Tuesday — stopping short of setting up a full commission of inquiry, a body with more legal power which has been used in the city to investigate past tragedies.
“I call for a thorough investigation and serious reform,” Lee said Tuesday. “We must uncover the truth, ensure that justice is served, let the deceased rest in peace and provide comfort to the living.”
But the government seemed focused on silencing voices of criticism this week.
A spokesperson for the Hong Kong government slammed foreign and destabilizing forces “who try to use the disaster to stir up chaos in society.” Then Beijing’s Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong vowed to take action against those who “oppose China and disrupt Hong Kong, no matter how far away” and “strike hard to cut off all the black hands reaching toward Hong Kong.”
Chinese state media outlets have churned out criticisms of anyone trying to “smear” the rescue efforts.
Operations of two pro-democracy groups, the Hong Kong Parliament and Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union, were banned, a move which the government said was “necessary for safeguarding national security.”
Several people have been hauled in by police. A student named Miles Kwan was arrested after circulating a petition calling on the government to respond to “four demands” in the fire aftermath, including launching an independent investigation, according to reports. The police arrested him for nearly two days, Kwan told The Post, and released him on bail on Monday.
Cheung, the former councillor who is also an LGBTQ activist, said eight national security police stormed into his house Sunday evening and took him to a police station, where they kept him for nearly 24 hours and seized his passport, Hong Kong ID and cellphone.
He said he was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement about his detention details and released on bail, though he is now barred from leaving Hong Kong while under investigation.
Some of his friends have also been summoned by national security police in the past month, he said, which he said amounted to a warning not to “cross the line” in the run-up to the election Sunday.
“Most pro-democracy former lawmakers and district councillors are either in jail, on trial, or in exile,” he said. “I am one of the few who are still active out here doing community work.”
Asked about the arrests, a spokesperson for the Hong Kong police said that they take all actions “in accordance with the law and actual circumstances.”
The political atmosphere has cast a chill over other efforts to promote transparency around the fire.
A Hong Kong student who had been agitating for more transparency about the fire said they initially didn’t think advocating for open information about the disaster would be politically sensitive. The events of the last few days, however, have muzzled them.
“All of this has made me really nervous,” said the student, who asked for anonymity due to the political sensitivity.
Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Asian Law, said that it doesn’t take many arrests to “intimidate people into silence.” He noted the clampdown also shows that the national security law has “evolved into an all-purpose political control tool, one that can be deployed in all sorts of circumstances, many of them quite far removed from the 2019 protest movement that led to the passage of the law.”
Some calls for accountability have shifted overseas, where Hong Kongers have more ability to speak freely. After Kwan’s petition was taken down by the government, two people from Hong Kong who now live abroad relaunched it on a different page. It now has about 12,000 signatures.
“The day after Miles Kwan was arrested, we felt it was necessary to continue his work so the truth could eventually come to light,” said the petition organizers, who asked not to be named over fears of political retribution. “There was nothing problematic about his petition. It is hard to understand why the Hong Kong government would remove his petition page … The call for uncovering the truth is entirely reasonable.”
An organic swell of volunteerism and public support for the fire victims has emerged in recent days, with new groups springing up to provide victims with housing, financial support or mental health counseling.
While some relief organizations have praised the government for its collaboration with grassroots groups to help victims, there has also been criticism that officials have attempted to consolidate the relief efforts under official organizations in recent days.
This consolidation, along with the political crackdown, shows that the government does not want civil society operating independently in the midst of the disaster, analysts say. The Hong Kong government has worked hard to squash the space for civic engagement in the years since the 2019 protests by arresting political leadersand shuttering news outlets.
“It’s obviously similar to the mainland practice: they want a top-down management of this crisis,” said Lai from Georgetown.
The public grievances about the fire may strike a particularly sensitive nerve with Beijing because Communist Party leaders often see collective mourning as politically dangerous: the Tiananmen protests in 1989, for example, started as a mass gathering to grieve the passing of liberal Chinese leader.
The grassroots mobilization in recent days show the “resilience” of civil society in Hong Kong despite the crackdown, Lai said, but the fire itself reveals the cost of eliminating independent media and effective opposition — which could have pushed for oversight of the construction companies, for instance, and avoided the loss of life.
“Crucial pillars to upholding good governance in Hong Kong … are all gone,” he added.
Political suppression won’t just have ramifications for this tragedy, said Jason Poon, an activist who worked with Wang Fuk Court residents to issue complaints to the government.
“If we silence all the criticism and don’t learn from this, then the next disaster may be even bigger,” he said.
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