由 jpichiban 
香港歷史博物館正在進行新的國家安全展覽，這個展覽通過展示 2019 年反政府抗議活動中示威者的暴力行為，試圖將這些抗議活動描述為西方勢力破壞中國穩定的陰謀。展覽還強調了中國共產黨通過國家安全法為香港人提供的穩定和安全。這個展覽被認為是港府對歷史的操縱，旨在塑造香港人的記憶，將香港與中國歷史更緊密地聯繫在一起。此外，港府還計劃建立更多博物館，以宣傳中國的成就和共產黨的歷史，並進行愛國主義教育，以應對香港本地身份認同的抬頭。
Original Title: A New ‘Hong Kong Story’: How the City’s Government Is Reshaping Its Memory Through a National Security Exhibit
Summary: Hong Kong’s History Museum, once a place to understand the city’s transformation from fishing village to bustling metropolis, is now hosting a new, permanent exhibit that tells a different, more ominous story: that Hong Kong has been under constant threat of subversion by hostile foreign forces. The exhibit features ubiquitous spies and footage of anti-government street protests described as being instigated by the West. Beijing-backed Hong Kong leader John Lee, unveiling the exhibit this month, made clear its primary purpose is to serve as a warning to Hong Kong. “There is no finish line in safeguarding national security, only continuous progress,” he said. The exhibit, run by Hong Kong’s top national security agency, opened to the public on Aug. 7.
The exhibit is a new facet of the Hong Kong government’s crackdown on the city, which began after the 2019 anti-government protests, the biggest challenge to Beijing’s rule in decades. In the years since the protests, authorities have introduced a raft of security laws to quash dissent. Now, they are moving to control how people remember the recent political turmoil.
The protests, according to the government, were not an organic expression of Hong Kong residents’ democratic aspirations, as opposition activists claim, but part of a Western plot to undermine China’s stability.
The national security exhibit opens with a short film that highlights the unequal treaties that forced China to cede Hong Kong to Britain in the 19th century and Japan’s occupation of the city during World War II. It then moves on to describe the 2019 protests, highlighting footage of protesters throwing homemade incendiary devices. “The rule of law was absent,” the narration says. It then praises the new national security law Beijing imposed after the subsequent crackdown for “shifting the situation from chaos to order.”
The exhibit displays battered shields, helmets and boots used by riot police who quelled the protests, listing injuries and damage the exhibit claims were inflicted by protesters: 629 police officers injured and more than 5,000 incendiary devices thrown by violent protesters.
Missing from the exhibit is any mention of the tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds and pepper spray police used. There is no mention of the mob that attacked protesters in a subway station wielding sticks, or the slow police response to that violence.
“One of the goals of this exhibit is to create fear of social ‘turmoil’ and ‘disorder’ and to convince Hong Kong people that they need the social stability that the Chinese Communist Party claims to provide,” said Kirk Denton, an emeritus professor at Ohio State University who has written a book about the politics of history museums in modern China.
Winnie Law, a 61-year-old saleswoman in Hong Kong, visited the museum recently. She said the exhibit reminded her of how difficult it was to get to work during the protests when demonstrators blocked roads and brought the subway system to a standstill. “How can ordinary people live a good life without national security?” she said.
In many ways, the national security exhibit draws from a playbook developed after the Chinese military’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In the years after the Tiananmen crackdown, the Chinese government promoted a patriotic education campaign in mainland China, casting Japan as the enemy of the Chinese people and the Communist Party as the sole force driving progress in Chinese history.
The new exhibit on national security is part of a broader “manipulation of history” campaign by Beijing that followed the Tiananmen crackdown, said Xiaohong He, a senior fellow at the University of Texas at Austin who is a historian of the Tiananmen massacre and who previously taught in Hong Kong. The Chinese leadership wants to “stamp its version of history into people’s memory,” she said, emphasizing “that China is a victim of the West and Japan.”
The Sea Defence Museum, a military museum that historically centered on a partially ruined British fort, has been repurposed by the Hong Kong government as a memorial to the Sino-Japanese War during World War II under the guise of patriotic education. It will be renamed the Hong Kong War of Resistance and Sea Defence Museum, using the term “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japan” that China uses to describe the conflict. The government also plans to create a museum focused on China’s achievements, the history of the Communist Party and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
China’s crackdown on dissent has led to the arrest of dozens of prominent pro-democracy activists on national security charges. The new national security exhibit further fuels widespread concerns about a chilling effect on dissent. Public libraries have removed books related to local pro-democracy figures or movements. Gatherings to remember the victims of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square have been banned, and a sculpture commemorating the massacre was removed. Academics have also come under pressure. Ms. He, a Canadian citizen, was recently denied a visa to return to her position as an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Some Hong Kong residents have expressed unease about what they see as efforts by the government to rewrite history. Before the History Museum’s permanent exhibit, “The Story of Hong Kong,” was closed in 2020 for renovations, it was packed with visitors. Some Hong Kong residents were concerned that authorities would use the planned renovations to erase the city’s colonial history and any mention of the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen victims, now considered sensitive.
Experts say the History Museum exhibit attempts to tie Hong Kong more closely to Chinese history. The authorities have also organized patriotic study tours to mainland China and rewritten school curriculums to address the rise of a local identity distinct from mainland China.
Some of the new items in the national security exhibit echo displays found in similar museums in mainland China. A Chinese national flag, stretching from ceiling to floor, hangs on a crimson wall. Alongside it is a four-meter-long oil painting reproduction that depicts Mao Zedong declaring the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Tiananmen Square in 1949.
Original article: https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20240823/hong-kong-history-museum/zh-hant/?utm_source=RSS