Liu Yifei in Disney's "Mulan" -
Walt Disney
The calls for boycott never end.
Mulan
, the Disney blockbuster, available on Disney + in France on December 4, is not out of the controversy.
The first call for a boycott came in the summer of 2019 after lead actress Liu Yifei took a stand on the protests in Hong Kong.
The actress, born in China in 1987 and naturalized American, had posted on August 15 on her Weibo account - the Chinese equivalent of Facebook - the message: “I support the Hong Kong police.
You can all attack me now.
What a shame for Hong Kong ”.
The #BoycottMulan hashtag emerged on social media back then, and it's back today.
It is even spreading to other Asian countries like Taiwan or Thailand.
But Liu Yifei's political stance is not the only thing criticized for the adaptation of the cult animated film.
Disney "bowed down to Beijing"
"All those who believe in human rights must boycott Mulan," wrote Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, before pointing out that Disney "bowed down to Beijing" in order to gain access to the Chinese cinema market.
In the end credits, Disney sends a special thank you to a dozen Chinese institutions that contributed to the film, notes
The Washington Post
, among which are four propaganda departments of the Chinese Communist Party in the Xinjiang region and the office. Municipal Public Security of Tourfan, located in the same region.
The Uighurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, a huge region that notably shares borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
China is accused of subjecting members of this minority to "appalling practices", including having interned at least a million Muslims in the region in political re-education camps.
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