03/12/2025
Statement of condemnation by the Hong Kong Parliament on the Wang F*k Court Fire
“Only Popular Sovereignty Can Prevent State-Sanctioned Tragedy”
The recent fire at Wang F*k Court in Tai Po, Hong Kong, which claimed over 150 innocent lives — including elderly residents, young children, and entire families — stands as a grim testament to a system where citizens’ safety is sacrificed to political convenience.
From the outset, this was not a mere accident or building-maintenance failure, but the consequence of an entrenched regime logic that treats Hong Kong people as expendable. The renovation of Wang F*k Court, mandated under mandatory building-inspection regulations, was executed against a backdrop of collusion: rigged tenders, the use of substandard materials sourced from mainland China, and the active protection of those responsible by pro-Beijing political actors.
Under this unholy alliance between government authorities, politically connected contractors, and pro-establishment parties, Wang F*k’s eight residential blocks were shrouded in combustible netting, windows sealed with foam, and fire alarms allowed to lapse into disrepair. Despite repeated complaints from residents, enforcement agencies, from labour authorities to fire services, remained silent, paralyzed by pressure from higher-ups.
In contrast to this institutional paralysis, the Hong Kong government’s response to civilian volunteer efforts was swift and ruthless. The regime displayed its administrative efficiency, not by pursuing accountability, but by deploying state security forces to suppress grassroots solidarity. Volunteers who organized supply stations for victims were forced to disperse under sweeping “clear-out” orders, while media outlets affiliated with the regime smeared them as agents of “chaos.” Students who petitioned for an independent investigation into the tragedy were arrested under national-security laws. Senior security officers visited the disaster site in a show of intimidation. In the regime’s eyes, those grieving and helping each other have become the enemy. This is not just callousness, it is the obliteration of humanity.
Even before the fire, the regime had shown its true priorities: wiping out any business or cultural space associated with dissent (“yellow shops”), whether through the conviction of community cultural centres like One-Punch Bookshop, or the years-long systematic harassment of longstanding establishments such as the Keelung Restaurant in Sham Shui Po. Their crime: being perceived as politically risky. Yet throughout this period, the same departments ignored a series of complaints filed by residents of Hong Fu Court.
What is perhaps most chilling is how the fire fits a broader pattern: in recent months, several unexplained scaffold-netting fires have erupted across Hong Kong, coinciding with mainland China’s severe steel overcapacity and depressed construction demand. On 18 October, a fire broke out at a scaffold-wrapped building in Central; on 29 October, another at a construction site in Kai Tak; and on 26 November, the fatal blaze at Wang F*k Court. Immediately following these events, the authorities launched a crusade to demonize traditional bamboo scaffolding, long regarded as safe and economical, and aggressively promote “metal-frame scaffolding” instead. The synchrony of policy, timing, and tragedy raises a disturbing question: is Hong Kong being used as a conveyor belt to absorb surplus Chinese steel and construction labours, at the cost of human lives and community safety?
This catastrophe has laid bare a fundamental truth: as long as power is not derived from the people, but from external masters, public policy will always serve the interests of those masters, not those it claims to protect. Only by re-establishing true popular sovereignty — a government accountable to the people — can the kinds of systemic disasters we have witnessed be prevented. Public authority must be restored to protect lives, not destroy them.
Hong Kong Parliament
3 December 2025
