Hong Kong Fire: Dissent and Alarm under the National Security Law |
Travelling via metro in the evening of 26th November, the blaze caught all passengers’ eyes in disbelief near the Tai Po Market Station. The sheer scale of the fire had never been expected. After getting off the metro at the station, people who were strangers immediately formed a volunteer group. They rushed to the nearest supermarkets, buying living necessities and carrying them to Wang Fuk Court. It had been just a couple of hours since the fire broke out, but the residential area had been flooded with volunteers and neighbors arriving in trucks, cars, or even bicycles. Soon, online platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook pages became the headquarters of disaster relief (Hawkins 2025); alleys, streets, small businesses, churches, and government buildings were woven into a comprehensive network of supply stations. This spontaneous, grassroots response exemplifies how a non-partisan crisis can rapidly revive civic solidarity in a context of political repression, exposing the limits of the NSL in fully extinguishing communal agency and mutual aid networks that echo pre-2020 protest dynamics (Kobayashi, Song, and P. Chan 2021). This article combines the author’s observations and the development of how a non-partisan outpouring of communal solidarity provoked the nerves of national security. It argues that it has exposed the fragility of the National Security Law (NSL)-imposed political dormancy, where the heavy repressive apparatus put in place since 2020 meets its challenge of public anger due to government failure.
Without a doubt, this was one of the biggest public mobilisation since the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in July 2020. When the fire was extinguished after 43 hours of burning, the people of Hong Kong turned their focus to investigating how the worst fire in a century broke out in Hong Kong (Luk 2025; Tse 2025a). Debunking the official claim that bamboo scaffolding was responsible to the devastating fire, local communities, especially residents of Wang Fuk Court, unleashed their fury towards the institutional failure: contractor’s corner-cutting use of materials; fire alarm were allegedly unplugged for convenience; the suspicious conspiracy between district councilor, Peggy Wong, and the former owner cooperation committee; and the government’s ineffective surveillance despite residents’ formal complaints to the Hong Kong Labour Department about the risk of fire (Power, 2025; A. Li 2025; Y. Li 2025; Wu 2025b; Bloomberg News 2025). These revelations of systemic negligence do not merely fuel anger; they tear holes in the government’s carefully maintained façade of competence and stability, showing that when failure is this blatant, the enforced political silence of the NSL era begins to crack, as universal safety grievances slip past the law’s ideological filters (Zhu 2023). By centering “man-made” blame on ignored warnings, residents inadvertently highlight how NSL securitization diverts resources from regulatory oversight, making everyday hazards the new frontlines of dissent.
Unlike the fire alarm of Wang Fuk Court, the fire of fury among survivors and citizens of Hong Kong soon triggered the political alarm of Hong Kong officials. What began as an outpouring of communal solidarity rapidly morphed into the largest wave of public mobilisation since the NSL was imposed, and the authorities responded by treating grief, questions, and calls for accountability as threats to stability itself. On 29th November, three days after the fire broke out, Wen Wei Po=published a special report, stating that “the National Security Department is highly concerned to prevent the black-clad rioters from hijacking the disaster relief activity… to carry out anti-PRC and pro-chaos conspiracies (Xiao 2025). This preemptive framing of aid efforts as potential subversion highlights the NSL’s expansive securitization of everyday civic actions, revealing the regime’s anxiety over non-ideological events that could erode its control and provoke unintended dissent (Chopra and Pils 2022; Karmazin 2023).
This special report not only serves as an unofficial warning to potential dissenting voices but also as a response to actions of public mobilisation that were once considered habitual in Hong Kong. In the days following the blaze, a 24-year-old student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Miles Kwan, launched an online petition outlining “four demands” – including advocacy of a comprehensive review of construction oversight regulation and investigation of potential corruption – which emphasises that the disaster was not a mere accident but a “man-made” tragedy rooted in systemic negligence (Hong Kong Democracy Council 2025a). One day after the launch of the online petition, national security police arrested Kwan for “seditious intention”, and the petition was promptly deleted from online platforms (Hong Kong Democracy Council 2025a). Along with Kwan, former district councilor Kenneth Cheung was detained the next day for similar advocacy (Leung 2025). These swift arrests demonstrate how the NSL conflates legitimate calls for accountability with sedition, thereby exposing the law’s fragility when faced with public demands that transcend partisan lines and directly confront governmental incompetence (Kobayashi, Song, and P. Chan 2021). When ordinary demands for safety and accountability sound almost identical to the old protest slogans, the regime has no language left except “sedition,” blurring the line between livelihood critique and political threat (Fu 2023; Lin and Fei 2023). In deleting petitions overnight, authorities only amplify the very fragility they seek to hide, as swift repression turns isolated voices into symbols of broader, ungovernable public outrage.
On the same day, authorities also intervened decisively on the network of local support, which was considered a revival of 2019’s mutual aid ethos. Volunteers were ordered to vacate the makeshift supply station at Kwong Fuk Estate and government buildings such as the Tung Cheong Street Sports Centre, on the grounds of restoring their public uses and alleged complaints of noise at night (TBS News Dig 2025). However, reports suggest underlying securitisation: pro-Beijing “care teams” threatened charges of “illegal assembly,” and national security police, including senior superintendent Steve Li Kwai-wah, visited sites to monitor for “black violence” infiltrators – code for perceived anti-government elements (Xiao 2025). This closure not only disrupted aid flows but symbolised NSL’s expansion, recasting organic solidarity as potential unrest and subordinating community resilience to state control. By dismantling these networks, the authorities inadvertently underscore the NSL’s inability to fully suppress organic civic responses, as such interventions risk amplifying public perceptions of overreach and further eroding trust in the post-2020 repressive framework: repressing empathy only deepens the crisis of confidence in a system that views neighbors helping neighbors as a security risk. (Baehr 2022).
After the closure of major supply stations and volunteer aid turned discreet, public mourning rituals became another flashpoint under NSL scrutiny. Memorials located at the Kwong Fuk Sitting-out Area drew thousands, with long queues snaking through parks, bridges, and to the river sidewalk, where people laid flowers, handwritten notes, and incense offerings (Khalil 2025). Vigils marked the“head-seven day” (頭七, tau4 cat1) on December 2,........