søndag 13. september 2020

As Many as Eight Internment Camps Operating in Xinjiang Region Where Disney Filmed ‘Mulan’

As many as eight internment camps may be operating in Turpan (in Chinese, Tulufan), local police said, as calls to boycott a Disney film shot partly in the ancient Silk Road City grew Friday, citing its links to entities responsible for repressing Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Disney released its U.S. $200 million live-action version of the popular 1998 animated film “Mulan” about a young woman who pretends to be a man so that she can join the military on behalf of her sick father on its streaming platform Disney+ over the weekend. The film opened in Chinese theaters on Friday. In the credits of the long-awaited remake, the company thanks several entities known to have contributed to Beijing’s repressive rule in the XUAR, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since April 2017.

Among those thanked in the credits are the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda commission in the XUAR, which has sought to justify the camps as voluntary “vocational centers,” despite reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service which has found that detainees are mostly held against their will in poor conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination.