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(REUTERS) – A group of bipartisan US lawmakers has urged Walt Disney Co CEO Bob Chapek to explain the company’s connection to “security and propaganda” authorities in China’s Xinjiang region during the production of the epic royal war Mulan.
Disney’s 200 million dollar (S $ 274 million) live-action remake of its animated classic about a warrior in ancient China has been the subject of controversy for being filmed in part in the Xinjiang region, where the China’s crackdown on ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims has been criticized by some governments, including the United States government and human rights groups.
“Disney’s apparent cooperation with officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) who are primarily responsible for committing atrocities, or covering up those crimes, is deeply disturbing,” the Republican senators and representatives wrote in last Friday’s letter ( 11 of September).
He urged Disney to make a detailed explanation.
The letter was retweeted by the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), which oversees human rights and the rule of law and submits an annual report to US President Donald Trump and Congress.
Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers, including former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, a Republican senator who co-chairs the CECC, said information about Beijing’s role in detaining Uyghurs in Xinjiang was in all the media prior to the Mulan filming.
“The decision to film parts of Mulan in cooperation with local security and propaganda elements offers tacit legitimacy to the perpetrators of crimes that can justify the designation of genocide.”
China’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly denied the existence of re-education camps in the region, labeling the facilities as vocational and educational institutions and accusing what it calls anti-China forces of smearing its Xinjiang policy.
Meanwhile, the movie, available on Disney’s streaming service in many markets, was released in China to lukewarm reception last Friday. It earned 46 million yuan (S $ 9.2 million) at the box office as of 8 p.m., a slow start compared to other blockbusters. The film is fighting mixed reviews, Covid-19 restrictions in theaters and a government ban on mainstream media coverage amid international calls for a boycott.
By comparison, The Eight Hundred, a patriotic film about China’s fight against the imperial Japanese during World War II, earned 141.3 million yuan on its first full day last month.
Mulan has sparked a backlash on social media abroad for his star Liu Yifei’s support of the Hong Kong police and for being partly filmed in the Xinjiang region.
Online critics in China also seemed more concerned with plot than politics. It got a rating of 4.7 out of 10 on the popular China social media site Douban. Others pointed to historical inaccuracies, including the use of buildings that appeared only hundreds of years after the film’s setting.
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