The crime of connection

Recently: How is an isolated North Korea suddenly producing advanced military tech? Rachel Minyoung Lee on an emboldened Kim Jong Un.

Today: Why did Hong Kong’s national-security police arrest petitioners demanding an independent inquiry into a fire that killed 156 people—then announce the inquiry two days later? Thousands signed. That seems to be the problem.

+ For members: How does joining a petition become a crime? Glacier Kwong on civic life in Hong Kong today.

& New music from Overmono ...

Ten thousand signatures

Last year, residents of Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court complained about fire hazards from the scaffolding netting wrapped around their buildings during renovation. Authorities told them the complex posed “relatively low fire risks.” Last Wednesday, fire tore through seven towers of the complex. The death toll has reached 156, with 30 still missing—some bodies reduced to ashes. 

An online petition calling for an independent inquiry gathered more than 10,000 signatures by Saturday. That same day, national-security police arrested three people—including Miles Kwan Ching-fung, a 24-year-old university student who’d been distributing materials in support of the petition. The charge: sedition. On Tuesday, Chief Executive John Lee announced a judge-led independent committee to investigate the fire—the very thing the petition demanded.

Why arrest people for demanding something the government then did?

Because ten thousand signatures are ten thousand people connecting—acting together, outside party channels, around a shared grievance. Beijing doesn’t wait to see what happens next. In 2008, Liu Xiaobo helped draft Charter 08, a petition calling for political reform. More than 10,000 people signed it. Liu was arrested, charged with subversion, and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He died in custody in 2017, still a prisoner.

The Chinese Communist Party’s concerns here aren’t abstract. In Poland in 1980, shipyard workers gathered to mourn colleagues killed by police. That mourning became Solidarity, the movement that ultimately brought down communist rule. A petition is also a gathering—and in this case, also driven by mourning. The Party remembers its history. It acts accordingly.

Meanwhile

• Narco-state absolved. Honduras’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández walked free from a West Virginia prison on Monday after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from U.S. President Donald Trump. Hernández was sentenced last year to 45 years for helping drug traffickers move more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. U.S. prosecutors had called Honduras under his rule a “narco-state.” Trump defended the pardon, calling Hernández’s treatment “harsh” and saying he was “asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras.” The release came as Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura—from Hernández’s own National Party—fights a razor-thin election.
• Technical tie, threats attached. Honduras’s presidential election remains deadlocked, with the Trump-backed Asfura and Salvador Nasralla separated by just 515 votes—a “technical tie,” per the National Electoral Council, which has begun a manual recount. Trump accused officials of “trying to change” the results: “If they do, there will be hell to pay!” The election determines who governs the Central American country from 2026 to 2030. Ruling-party candidate Rixi Moncada trails at roughly 20 percent. Both leading candidates have said they may restore ties with Taiwan, severed in 2023—a potential diplomatic blow to Beijing.
• Five hours, no compromise. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for roughly five hours in the Kremlin on Tuesday, presenting a revised U.S. peace plan for Ukraine. The Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov called the talks “useful, constructive, and meaningful”—but said no compromise had been reached on territorial issues, “without which we do not see a solution.” Before the meeting, Putin warned that Russia was ready to fight if Europe “wants to,” accusing European officials of blocking peace with “absolutely unacceptable” amendments to Trump’s proposals. Witkoff and Kushner are expected to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday.
• A pilgrim departs. Pope Leo XIV concluded his first foreign trip on Tuesday with prayers at the site of Beirut’s 2020 port explosion and a waterfront Mass attended by an estimated 150,000 people. In his farewell at the airport, the pope called for “attacks and hostilities” to cease: “We must recognize that armed struggle brings no benefit.” The six-day journey took Leo to Turkey and then Lebanon—Muslim-majority countries with Christian minorities under pressure. At the blast site, where 218 people died, and no senior official has been held accountable, the pope lit a candle and embraced grieving families. Many Lebanese fear Israeli strikes will intensify now that the papal visit has ended.
• Cover story. Nigeria’s Defense Minister Mohammed Badaru Abubakar resigned Monday, citing health reasons—days after President Bola Tinubu declared a national security emergency. His departure follows intensified violence across northern Nigeria, including the kidnapping of some 300 students in Niger State and mass abductions in Kebbi and Sokoto. Badaru had drawn criticism after telling the BBC that some terrorist hideouts were "too dense" for bombs to reach.

For members

Signing your name

How does joining a petition become a crime? Glacier Kwong on civic life in Hong Kong today.

“Organizing community gatherings, hosting screenings, doing art, being a journalist—these normal things turn extremely political.” Since Beijing imposed Hong Kong’s national-security law in 2020, dozens of civil-society groups have disbanded. The Chinese government has sent activists to prison or forced them into exile around the world.

Here in The Signal, Glacier Kwong describes what that transformation has looked like from the inside: how a petition or a vigil becomes a crime—and what’s left of a movement when resistance is cut down but “like grass that always grows through the cracks” …

New music

‘Paradise Runner’

In peak form, here’s Overmono, with a new, U.K.-garage-inflected track. Tom and Ed Russell have dug up a first-rate sample—Monifah’s 1996 R&B hit, “All I Need”—and the result, with its rave drums and breakbeat tempo, is pure uplift.