\n<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities have arrested several activists and issued a stern warning to \u201canti-China and pro-chaos elements\u201d amid criticism of the government\u2019s response to Hong Kong\u2019s deadliest fire in a generation.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong\u2019s national security police arrested three people over the weekend, state-backed and commercial media reported, as calls mounted for accountability following the city\u2019s worst fire in nearly eight decades.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Authorities arrested ex-district Councillor Kenneth Cheung Kam-hung and an unidentified volunteer who managed supplies for survivors on Sunday, according to multiple reports, a day after the arrest of a university student on suspicion of sedition. Cheung was arrested on suspicion of \u201cattempting to incite discord\u201d, The Standard newspaper reported.<\/p>\n On Saturday, authorities arrested Miles Kwan, a 24-year-old student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after he created an online petition calling for greater transparency and accountability from the government, multiple reports said.<\/p>\n The petition included four demands, including the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to probe the circumstances of the fire, including whether potential conflicts of interest may have contributed to the disaster.<\/p>\n Before it was removed from the internet on Saturday, the petition had garnered more than 10,000 supporters.<\/p>\n China\u2019s national security office in Hong Kong appeared to condemn the petition before its removal, accusing activists of using \u201cthe banner of \u2018petitioning the people\u2019 to incite confrontation and tear society apart.\u201d<\/p>\n Hong Kong\u2019s Office for Safeguarding National Security also accused figures with \u201csinister intentions\u201d of exploiting the fire to return the city to the \u201cblack-clad violence\u201d that erupted during mass antigovernment protests in 2019.<\/p>\n On Monday, a commentary in the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper called on the public to be vigilant against \u201canti-government elements\u201d with \u201cmalicious intentions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have even gone so far as to \u2018act as representatives\u2019 to establish a so-called \u2018concern group,\u2019 put forward so-called \u2018four demands,\u2019 distribute leaflets, and launch a petition, all in an attempt to incite public unrest,\u201d the commentary said.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir actions are utterly devoid of conscience and humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n The crackdown is the latest sign of the narrowing space for dissent in Hong Kong following Beijing\u2019s sweeping overhaul of the semi-autonomous territory\u2019s political and legal landscape in response to the 2019 demonstrations.<\/p>\n China has repeatedly denied that Hong Kong\u2019s civil liberties have deteriorated, insisting that the passage of two far-reaching national security laws have ensured that residents\u2019 rights and freedoms are \u201ceven better protected\u201d than before.<\/p>\n Beijing has also argued that the legislation ensures the continuation of Hong Kong\u2019s partial autonomy under \u201cOne Country, Two Systems,\u201d the arrangement under which UK returned the territory to China in 1997.<\/p>\n Nathan Law, an activist and critic of Beijing who served in Hong Kong\u2019s legislature, called the authorities\u2019 actions \u201coutrageous\u201d and the latest example of a \u201chighly authoritarian trend\u201d in the former British colony.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal of the government is to create a chilling effect by arresting these individuals. Any civil actions without the government\u2019s permission are now illegal,\u201d Law, who lives in self-exile in the UK and is wanted by Hong Kong authorities on national security charges, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government worries about people congregating and initiating collective action, whether it is political or not.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hong Kong Police Force did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Ronny Tong, a non-official member of Hong Kong\u2019s de facto cabinet, disputed the suggestion that authorities were stifling criticism of the government\u2019s handling of the disaster.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the major newspapers in Hong Kong, there are very many various suggestions and\u2026 criticisms of the handling of the incident in Hong Kong, so by no means is there a general suppression of different views or criticisms of the government,\u201d Tong told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Tong said that that while it would be inappropriate to comment on the cases of people who had yet to face the judicial process, the law allowed for \u201cconstructive\u201d criticism of the authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cOne must not simply make the case of a few arrests \u2013 the circumstances of which are still unclear \u2013 to come to the conclusion that the Hong Kong government are trying to stifle views which they don\u2019t like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At least 151 people were killed in Wednesday\u2019s blaze at a high-rise apartment complex in Hong Kong\u2019s northern district of Tai Po, the worst fire in the city since at least 1948.<\/p>\n The scale of the disaster has prompted scrutiny of safety standards in Hong Kong\u2019s construction industry, with authorities honing in on how the use of substandard materials in renovation works on the block may have aided the fire\u2019s rapid spread.<\/p>\n Hong Kong authorities have arrested 13 people as part of their investigations into the fire, including the directors of an engineering consultant company involved in the renovations.<\/p>\n While the Hong Kong police and the city\u2019s Independent Commission Against Corruption have launched separate investigations, the government has so far not indicated that it will establish an independent commission of inquiry.<\/p>\n Hong Kong authorities launched commissions of inquiry, a legacy of British rule in the territory, in response to many past disasters.<\/p>\n Past inquiries, which have been typically led by a judge, looked into tragedies including a 2012 ferry accident that left 39 people dead and a 1996 fire that cost 41 lives.<\/p>\n Kevin Yam, a former lawyer in Hong Kong, said that Beijing could not tolerate public criticism of the official response to the fire as it was concerned that \u201cthe smallest spark of dissent can snowball into something bigger\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThose who read George Orwell will know that phrase, \u2018They who control the past control the present future, and they who control the present control the future.\u2019 And the Communist Party of China has always been very good at that,\u201d Yam, who is wanted by the Hong Kong authorities for alleged national security offences, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThey see that once they silence the dissent and the criticism, and then they flood the zone with favourable stories about how they handled things, then that becomes the official record of history.\u201d<\/p>\n Once known for its raucous media, vibrant civil society and political diversity, Hong Kong\u00a0has dramatically curtailed the space for dissent since the 2019 protests.<\/p>\n Under the laws, which have been widely condemned by foreign governments and rights groups, authorities have forced the closure of critical media outlets, effectively eliminated opposition parties from the city\u2019s legislature, and banned politically sensitive protests.<\/p>\n The mainland Chinese and Hong Kong governments have defended the laws as a proportionate response to the antigovernment protests, which began peacefully before descending into street battles between demonstrators and police, and other national security threats facing the territory.<\/p>\n In a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the 2020 law in June, Xia Baolong, Beijing\u2019s top official for Hong Kong affairs, called the legislation a \u201cguardian\u201d of the city\u2019s semi-autonomous status and stability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Chinese authorities have arrested several activists and issued a stern warning to \u201canti-China and pro-chaos elements\u201d amid criticism of the government\u2019s response to Hong Kong\u2019s deadliest fire in a generation. Hong Kong\u2019s national security police arrested three people over the weekend, state-backed and commercial media reported, as calls mounted for accountability following the city\u2019s worst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Outrageous\u2019<\/h2>\n
Commission of Inquiry<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"