HK government stamps on dissent after fire

The Hong Kong goverrnment is trying to prevent public mourning after the Wang Fuk Court fire on 26 November 2025 escalating into a city-wide grievance against corruption and shoddy unsafe practices in the building industry and governmental incompetence and lack of accountability.

Mourners have been discouraged from gathering near the site, which is now sealed off. National security laws were used to arrest four people and stymie a press conference.

One, Wong On-yin, was slated to appear at a civil society-led press conference about the fatal Wang Fuk Court fire. The press conference was cancelled at the last minute after some of the speakers, including Wong and Bruce Liu, a solicitor and chair of the Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood (ADPL), were taken in by national security police.

The University of Hong Kong denied student societies the use of the campus to mourn the victims, citing concerns about “social instability” and “force majeure”. The university also reportedly urged student groups against organising any form of memorial activities. The Hong Kong Baptist University suspended the operations of its student union after messages were posted on a “democracy wall” managed by the union, which expressed condolences and urged the government to address public concerns regarding the fire. The university also used barricades and hoarding to cover the message board from public view.

Two weeks after Chinese University of Hong Kong student Miles Kwan (who launched an online petition calling for an independent inquiry) was arrested, his university refused to recognise two of its college-based student unions, causing them to disband.

The government pressed on with the “patriots-only” 9 December elections for the Legislative Council, working with pro-Beijing parties to incentivise voters to turn out, to no avail. The turnout was 31.9%, versus 30.2% in 2021 (in the aftermath of disbarring pro-democracy parties and candidates), which was the lowest since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Actual numbers were lower than four years ago. Four people were arrested for inciting voters to abstain or spoil their ballot papers. Spoilt votes reached a record 3.12%, topping the previous record of 2.03% in 2021.

The death toll from the fire has risen to 161, with missing people still not yet accounted for. Among the dead were overseas domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines. Many elderly and young children survived because of their bravery.

The survivors are still reeling from the trauma of losing their neighbourhood, homes and loved ones. For now, most of them (around 3,500) are being accommodated in rent-free temporary housing provided mainly by NGOs. Their short-term financial needs are being met by massive donations from all sectors of Hong Kong civil society, totalling HK$3.8 billion (£380 million) to date, dwarfing by ten times the HK$300 million allocated by the Government. However, the road to normalcy for the former residents is long and challenging.

The Government’s judge-led investigation on the disaster, which stops short of a Commission of Inquiry, plans to report in about nine months’ time. So far the police have arrested 16 persons connected to the renovation project on suspicion of manslaughter. The Government has sought to dissolve the owners’ management committee. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) had apprehended the present and former chairs of the owners’ management committee.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said on 9 December: “At a tragic time like this, the space for discussion and debate on issues of major public interest and concern is more important than ever… The people of Hong Kong understandably want answers and accountability, so that the hundreds of victims are properly compensated and to avoid such a tragedy occurring again… I am deeply concerned by reports that the territory’s draconian security laws are being applied against individuals who have called publicly for a transparent and independent inquiry, a review of construction oversight, government accountability, and support for affected residents, among other things. I urge the authorities to drop these cases against those seeking accountability.”

Background

Since the disaster, local and international journalists have uncovered the horrendous background to the disaster.

The colonial government’s housing policy for Hong Kong had been a never-ending catching-up exercise, with demand overwhelming supply every post-war decade. The 1950s baby boom in Hong Kong was multiplied several-fold by waves of migrants from across its border with China, particularly during the years of famine (1959-1961). This was a catastrophic event following Mao Zedong’s disastrously utopian Great Leap Forward project, resulting in tens of millions of deaths from starvation, a disaster largely man-made due to radical collectivisation, exaggerated grain reports leading to excessive state seizure etc, compounded by the 1960 Sino-Soviet split, which disrupted the PRC’s economic development.

Since the 1997 handover, housing has continued to be a major blemish for the HKSAR Government’s narrative of Hong Kong as a world-class city. In a city of around six million people, in 1997, the waiting time for public housing for around 150,000 families was about 6.5 years. The first HKSAR Government pledged to reduce it to three years by 2005. The waiting time in 2025 is about 5.3 years, with 116,000 on the waiting list, according to the HKSAR Housing Bureau.

Most of Hong Kong’s working-class housing estates were built from the 1950s onwards. While each decade represented improved standards, their overall quality, especially in Hong Kong’s sub-tropical climate, was put second to speed of completion. Systemic problems existed and continue to exist in terms of construction quality, durability of materials and projects, corruption, regulatory framework and working conditions. The high-risk construction industry recorded 3,097 industrial accidents in 2023, 3,046 in 2022. The accident rate per 1,000 workers was 27.6 in 2023, 29.1 in 2022.

Sea water

The construction industry right up to the 1980s had typically used sea water in making reinforced concrete because fresh water was scarce and chlorides in seawater sped up cement hydration. That gave quicker initial strength and more rapid construction — and a time-bomb of corroding concrete which affects thousands of buildings today.

Wang Fuk Court was part of the public housing Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) construction wave in the early 1980s, probably inspired by the Right to Buy scheme introduced by Thatcher’s Government in 1980. During that era, there was widespread short-piling fraud and corruption, where contractors deliberately installed piles shorter than designed, leading to severe building settlement, tilting, and even demolition. The Government announced on 21 November 1985 that structural problems were found in a total of 577 blocks built between 1982 and 1984, with 26 identified as beyond repair and for immediate demolition. In 2000-1 two HOS blocks in Yu Chui Court, Yuen Chau Kok, Sha Tin, also in the New Territories had to be demolished because of short-piling problems.

Eventually, after the collapse of a 50-year old five-storey building in Kowloon, the HKSAR Government introduced in 2012 a Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme for buildings more than 40 years old. The scheme requires owners to complete inspections and repairs within a limited timeframe, greatly reducing owners’ bargaining power over maintenance projects, with construction consultants and companies exploiting this fertile ground for bid-rigging and pressurising owners into higher prices and unreasonable terms. Property owners are often left powerless to intervene once a consultant is appointed by the owners’ management committee, especially when the two collude.

Hong Kong Free Press and the New York Times have both interviewed Chiu Yan-loy, a member of the Property Owners Anti-Bid-Rigging Alliance, who explained the practices of collusive tendering, common fraudulent tactics, limitations in government oversight, and general corruption in the building maintenance industry, as well as the power of large syndicates who monopolise the bidding processes.

In the case of Wang Fuk Court, since renovation began in January 2024, the owners had unearthed previous conviction records of the companies concerned. They had complained about various malpractices and their suspicions of collusion to various government departments including the ICAC. 16 site inspections since July 2024 were conducted by various government departments, the last one a week before the fatal fire, to no avail. The fire department revealed that fire alarms in all eight blocks did not sound in previous tests they had conducted. Multiple government agencies played down concerns, performed perfunctory inspections, or relied on reassurances from contractors.

On 2 January the ICAC arrested 21 people allegedly involved in manipulating two other renovation project contracts elsewhere in Kwun Tong, Kowloon. More can be expected as the Government tries to assuage public anger. Scapegoating bamboo-scaffolders, one of Hong Kong’s iconic cultural heritages, has only increased anger.

Despite the purge of all pro-democracy opposition in Legco and the decimation of civil society institutions like a relatively free press has proved to be a hollow victory, the saga of Wang Fuk Court could start a fire of public discontent.