In response to criticism of the government’s response to Hong Kong’s most stringent fire in a generation, Chinese authorities have taken several activists into custody and issued a stern warning to “anti-China and pro-chaos elements”
In response to the city’s worst fire in nearly eight decades, calls for accountability grew for the national security police of Hong Kong over the weekend, according to state-backed and commercial media reports.
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A day after the arrest of a university student on suspicion of sedition, authorities on Sunday detained former district councillor Kenneth Cheung Kam-hung and an unidentified volunteer who managed supplies for survivors. According to The Standard newspaper, Chong was detained on suspicion of “inciting discord.”
According to multiple reports, authorities detained 24-year-old Miles Kwan, a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after he launched an online petition for greater accountability and transparency from the government.
The petition made demands that an independent commission of inquiry be established to examine the fire’s circumstances, including whether potential conflicts of interest might have contributed to the disaster.
The petition had more than 10,000 supporters before it was taken down from the internet on Saturday.
Before being removed, activists accused China’s national security office of using “the banner of petitioning the people to incite confrontation and tear society apart” in Hong Kong.
The city’s Office for Safeguarding National Security has also accused individuals with “sinister intentions” of utilizing the fire to bring the city back to the “black-clad violence” that erupted during large-scale antigovernment protests in 2019.
A Wen Wei Po commentary from the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper on Monday urged the public to be wary of “anti-government elements” and “malicious intentions.”
They even went so far as to “act as representatives” to form a ‘conventional’ group, submit ‘four demands,’ distribute leaflets, and launch a petition, according to the commentary.
Their actions are completely devoid of humanity and conscience.
‘Outrageous’
Following Beijing’s extensive overhaul of the semi-autonomous territory’s political and legal landscape in response to the 2019 demonstrations, the crackdown is the latest indication of the shrinking space for dissent in Hong Kong.
China has repeatedly refuted claims that Hong Kong’s civil liberties have declined, arguing that residents’ rights and freedoms have been “even better protected” by the passage of two ambitious national security laws.
Beijing has also argued that the law allows for the continuation of Hong Kong’s partial autonomy under the 1997 UK-imposed “One Country, Two Systems” agreement.
The authorities’ actions, according to Nathan Law, an activist and critic of Beijing who served in the legislature of Hong Kong, are “outrageous” and the latest illustration of a “highly authoritarian trend” in the former British colony.
By arresting these individuals, the government hopes to have a chilling effect. Law, who lives in self-exile in the UK and is wanted by Hong Kong authorities on national security charges, told Al Jazeera. “Any civil actions that go against the government’s orders are now prohibited.”
Whether or not it is political, “the government worries about people gathering and starting a collective action.”
Requests for comment were not responded to by the Hong Kong Police Force.
Ronny Tong, a non-official member of Hong Kong’s de facto cabinet, refuted the claim that the authorities were stifling criticism of the government’s handling of the disaster.
By no means is there a general suppression of different opinions or criticisms of the government, Tong told Al Jazeera, “If you look at the major newspapers in Hong Kong, there are very many various suggestions and… criticisms of the handling of the incident in Hong Kong.”
Tong argued that the law allowed for “constructive” criticism of the authorities, even though it would be inappropriate to comment on cases involving people who have not yet gone through the court system.
To arrive at the conclusion that the Hong Kong government are trying to stifle views that they don’t like, he said, one must not simply make the case of a few arrests. The circumstances are still undetermined.
The worst fire in Hong Kong’s northern district of Tai Po since at least 1948 resulted in at least 151 fatalities in the Wednesday fire at a high-rise apartment complex.
Authorities are investigating how the rapid spread of the fire may have been helped by the magnitude of the disaster, with authorities looking into how the use of substandard materials during the block’s renovation projects might have contributed.
The directors of an engineering consulting firm involved in the renovations are among the 13 people who have been detained by Hong Kong authorities as part of their investigation into the fire.
Commission of inquiry
The government has not yet indicated that it will establish an independent commission of inquiry, despite the independent commission against corruption launched by the Hong Kong police and the city’s Independent Commission Against Corruption.
In response to numerous previous tragedies, Hong Kong authorities established commissions of inquiry, a remnant of British rule in the area.
Tragedies were investigated in previous inquiries, which were typically led by judges, such as a 2012 ferry accident that left 39 people dead and a 1996 fire that claimed 41 lives.
Beijing, according to former Hong Kong attorney Kevin Yam, could not tolerate public criticism of the government’s response to the fire because it was worried that “the smallest spark of dissent can turn into something bigger.”
The phrase “They who control the past control the present control the future, and they who control the present control the future” is well known to those who read Orwell. Yam, who is wanted by the Hong Kong authorities for alleged national security offenses, told Al Jazeera that the Communist Party of China has always been very good at that.
They observe that the official record of history is silenced and the criticism is silenced before favorable stories about how things are handled are released into the world.
Since the protests in 2019, Hong Kong has dramatically reduced the space for dissent. It was once known for its noisy media, vibrant civil society, and political diversity.
Authorities have effectively removed opposition parties from the city’s legislature, banned politically sensitive protests, and forced the closure of critical media outlets in accordance with the laws, which have been widely condemned by international governments and rights organizations.
In response to the anti-government demonstrations that started peacefully before morphing into street fights between protesters and police, and other threats to national security facing the territory, the governments of China and Hong Kong have defended the laws as a fair measure.
