Boycott calls for Mulan grow louder over scenes filmed in Xinjiang
HONG KONG: Disney’s Mulan remake is facing boycott calls after it emerged that some of the blockbuster’s scenes were filmed in China’s Xinjiang, where rights abuses against the region’s Muslim population have been widely documented.
The $200 million film about a legendary female Chinese warrior was already tangled in political controversy after star Liu Yifei voiced support for Hong Kong’s police as they were cracking down on pro-democracy protests last year.
The latest furore exploded as soon as the credits stopped rolling after the movie began showing on the Disney+ channel last week.
Viewers spotted that Disney included “special thanks” to eight government entities in Xinjiang - including the public security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang where multiple internment camps have been documented. Another entity thanked was the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department in Xinjiang.
The revelation has sparked anger at a time of heightened scrutiny over Hollywood’s willingness to bow to China.
Rights groups, academics and journalists have exposed a crackdown against Uighur and Kazakh Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass internments, enforced sterilisations and forced labour.
‘Problematic movie’
Isaac Stone Fish, who is a senior fellow at the Asia Society, said the film has become “arguably Disney’s most problematic movie” since Song of the South - which was a 1946 glorification of antebellum plantation life that the company has since pulled.
“It’s sufficiently astonishing that it bears repeating,” he wrote in a Washington Post column. “Disney has thanked four propaganda departments and a public security bureau in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China that is the site of one of the world’s worst human rights abuses happening today.”
The live-action remake of Disney’s 1998 animation classic, Mulan has had a troubled release. It was meant to hit global theatres in March, but became an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic.