Disney’s ‘Mulan’ faces criticism for thanking China’s Xinjiang authorities in credits

[Joshua Wong has encouraged a global boycott of Walt Disney Co's release "Mulan".]
Disney is under fire for filming parts of "Mulan" in Xinjiang province, where over one million Uighurs have been detained in internment camps.https://t.co/Q4TPCvstzJ #BoycottMulan pic.twitter.com/jFwedSIGkr

— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) September 9, 2020

While the Turpan Public Security Bureau has been accused of committing human rights violations and abuses in the region, the CCP’s Publicity Department is known to spread propaganda messages across Xinjiang.

https://twitter.com/jeannette_ng/status/1302767969466974208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1302767969466974208%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F09%2F08%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-mulan-xinjiang.html

According to data released by the US State Department, as many as two million Muslim-majority Uighurs and other Turkic minorities have been imprisoned in massive re-education camps in Xinjiang since 2015, a CNN report stated.

The Chinese government has repeatedly refuted claims of housing minorities in detention centres, and has instead described them as vocational training centres. According to the government, the camps are necessary to fight Islamic extremism in the area. However, state authorities have been accused of verbal and physical abuse in documents and testimonies leaked from the camps.

This is not the first controversy the film has generated in recent times.

Soon after its release, a number of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong called for its boycott over comments made by the film’s lead actress Yifei Liu in support of the city’s police, who have been accused of violently cracking down on anti-government protesters.

The 33-year-old actress, who was born in China but is a citizen of the United States, took to popular Chinese social media platform Weibo to share the words of Fu Guohao, a reporter for the Chinese Communist Party-run media outfit Global Times, who was assaulted by a group of pro-democracy demonstrators and was later touted as a ‘hero’ on Chinese social media.

“I support the Hong Kong police. You can beat me up now,” her post read. In another post shared soon after, she wrote: “I also support the Hong Kong police.”

Yifei’s post was widely condemned on social media, and before long #BoycottMulan began trending on Twitter — a platform that is banned in China.