SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In Hong Kong, authorities are vowing to conduct a transparent investigation into how at least 160 people died in one of the deadliest fires there in decades. But as NPR's Emily Feng reports, authorities are also arresting and detaining people who have called for accountability over the blaze.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: After a massive fire burned down seven of the eight high-rise buildings in a Hong Kong residential complex, investigators are looking into the substandard plastic netting and Styrofoam boards which encase the buildings. One student named Miles Kwan started a petition for an independent inquiry.
KRIS CHENG: He made very mild demands that even pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong would agree to.
FENG: This is Kris Cheng, a longtime Hong Kong journalist who's been covering the tragedy. He notes the student was briefly arrested over the petition. For Hong Kong authorities, he says...
CHENG: Stability is more important than anything.
FENG: And over the weekend, Hong Kong's national security office summoned foreign journalists to warn them not to smear the state's response to the fire. Cheng says all this erodes public trust, including the fact that the investigations committee authorities have assembled has no statutory power.
CHENG: This kind of committee would not have the legal power to summon people, companies or officials.
FENG: Hong Kong police and local media say Beijing's national security law has been used to arrest at least four people so far over statements or actions asking for more accountability over the fire. Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, says the use of the national security law here is likely intentional.
THOMAS KELLOGG: They give the government more or less a blank check on whom they can arrest, how long they can hold them and even limits on their basic due process rights. And so this is a powerful tool to control and even repress criticism.
FENG: Operations for Hong Kong Baptist University's student union were also suspended over the weekend after they organized a commemorative bulletin board for fire victims. Historian Rowena He studies Chinese political movements, especially Beijing's crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And as she watched the fallout from the Hong Kong fire, she says she started to cry at the parallels she saw.
ROWENA HE: Watching all of this happen in the past 35 years since Tiananmen, you saw that it happened again and again and again, and they now - they're coming after Hong Kong.
FENG: Historically, she says, the whistleblowers are always punished. Emily Feng, NPR News.
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