A bipartisan group of 13 senators and six congressmen slammed Disney on Friday after the film credits for its live-action remake of Mulan thanked Chinese Communist Party entities accused of oppressing China’s Uighur population.
“We are writing to inquire about The Walt Disney Company’s cooperation with elements of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s security and propaganda authorities in the production of Mulan,” the lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote to Disney CEO Bob Chapek. “Disney’s apparent cooperation with officials of the People’s Republic of China who are most responsible for committing atrocities — or for covering up those crimes — is profoundly disturbing.”
Pointing out that the closing credits of Mulan extend thanks to the “Turpan Municipal Bureau of Public Security” and the “Publicity Department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Committee” and other local XUAR propaganda groups, the lawmakers noted that, in October 2019, the Commerce Department added the Turpan Municipal Bureau of Public Security to its sanctioned Entity List for “engaging in activities contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States” and being “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the XUAR.”
The letter also said that “the XUAR Publicity (or Propaganda) Department — which is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — has denied, distorted, and otherwise covered up these crimes against humanity that also include forced labor and a campaign of mass sterilization, forced abortions, and birth suppression against Uyghurs.”
Since 2017, as many as 2 million Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities have been moved into detention camps, often referred to as concentration camps, in the western Xinjiang province of China. There, Uighurs are allegedly put through rigorous “deradicalization” and “reeducation” programs. But the camps are just one part of alleged large-scale surveillance and oppression inflicted on China’s Uighur population.
The Chinese Communist Party has reportedly imposed forced birth control, sterilizations, and abortions on the Uighur population in a race-based effort to reduce the minority Muslim population in the country, with a late June analysis by the Associated Press finding that Beijing is imposing “draconian measures to slash birth rates” among Uighur Muslims and other minorities “as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population” while the Chinese government “encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.”
The lawmakers said that “publicly available information prior to the filming of Mulan showed the existence of mass internment camps for the detention of Uyghurs” and that by July 2018, “major news outlets in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong all had reported that Beijing had interned hundreds of thousands, if not more than one million, Uyghurs and minorities in the XUAR.”
The legislators told Disney to describe “in detail” Disney’s “cooperation” with those two groups and any other Chinese Communist Party entities while filming Mulan in Xinjiang, including any contractual requirements or requests for Disney to thank those groups. The legislators also asked Disney to describe the company’s awareness, as well as the awareness of the film and production crews, of “contemporaneous reports” about the abuse of Uighurs there and whether Mulan made use of any local or forced labor. The senators also asked whether any Chinese Communist Party officials were involved in Mulan decision-making and what Disney’s policy is on cooperating with known human rights abusers.
The lawmakers also noted Friday that Disney’s website claims: “We believe social responsibility is a long-term investment that serves to strengthen our operations and competitiveness in the marketplace, enhance risk management, attract and engage talented employees, and maintain our reputation.” The bipartisan legislators said that “we seek to fully understand how you implement this commitment in the activities you undertake in China.”
“The decision to film parts of Mulan in the XUAR, in cooperation with local security and propaganda elements, offers tacit legitimacy to these perpetrators of crimes that may warrant the designation of genocide,” the legislators concluded.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas took aim at Hollywood’s relationship with China when he introduced the SCRIPT Act earlier this year.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently called on the State Department to investigate whether China’s reported campaign of forced birth control and abortion against the Uighur population constitutes genocide.
The Commerce Department imposed sanctions on Chinese companies “complicit” in the repression of Uighurs back in May, and President Trump signed a law in June that enshrines human rights for Uighurs in U.S. policies toward China and requires the president to levy sanctions against Chinese party leaders in Xinjiang.
Also this summer, the Trump administration announced sanctions aimed at Chinese Communist Party officials, who the U.S. believes have been involved in carrying out human rights abuses against Uighurs and other minorities in China. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control revealed the sanctions against a Chinese Communist Party entity and four Chinese Communist Party officials “in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities” in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China.
