Disney’s live-action remake of “Mulan” has been long anticipated by fans; however, Disney fans across the world are angered after finding out that parts of the movie were filmed in the Xinjiang Province of China. The filming location of the movie is problematic because currently, over three million Uighur Muslims are being detained in Chinese concentration camps located in the Xinjiang Province. The Uighurs are a large Muslim and Turkic minority who live in China’s North-Western Xinjiang Province, which was traditionally known as East Turkistan.
Officials of the Chinese Communist Party have denied the nature of these concentration camps, instead citing them as “re-education” camps. They have defended the need for these camps, citing that they are designed to curb the rise of Islamic extremism in China. However, personal accounts from Uighurs who have managed to escape these so-called re-education camps have a different story to tell. Anyone who has come out of the camps alive has confirmed that the conditions in these camps are worse than prisons. In these camps, Uighurs are forced to endure unfathomable conditions and torture, simply because of their religion. They are beaten, raped, sterilized so that they cannot reproduce, and physically and emotionally tortured. Officials in these camps also try to force the Uighurs to disown their beliefs, forcing them to drink alcohol and eat pork, which are all impermissible in Islam. However, even outside of these camps Uighurs live in a police state, with their actions undergoing high surveillance. They have no privacy and live in a constant state of fear that they will end up in a camp.
Related: What’s Going On with the Uyghurs?
The problem with Disney filming the live-action version of “Mulan” in the Xinjiang Province is that they are normalizing the genocide of millions of Uighur Muslims.
Disney did not only turn a blind eye to the atrocities that the Chinese government is committing against Uighurs, but they are also actively cooperating with the authorities that are responsible for upholding and committing the atrocities against Uighurs. The film credits of the movie give thanks to many Chinese Communist Party propaganda departments located in Beijing, as well as the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, who are directly responsible for enforcing the concentration camps and ethnic cleansing of the Uighur people.
I urge anyone with a moral compass who believes in human rights to not watch the live-action remake of “Mulan.”
As a viewer, by watching “Mulan”, you are turning a blind eye to the ethnic cleansing of the Uighur Muslims and remaining complacent in the face of these human rights violations which have been ongoing since 2017. It’s important to recognize that as a consumer, the media you consume and spend your money on can memorialize the inequalities happening behind the scenes.
Disney did not need to film the movie in Xinjiang. There are plenty of other regions in China, and countries in the world, that could offer the mountainous scenery that was needed for the film. Unfortunately, Disney has chosen to play a role in the normalization of genocide against the Uighur Muslim minority group, and it will go down in history that Disney was complacent in these crimes against humanity.