HONG KONG—Walt Disney Co. ’s $200 million live-action remake of “Mulan” is taking fire from human-rights activists over the filmmakers’ cooperation with authorities in China’s Xinjiang region, where officials have been accused of committing rights abuses against millions of members of ethnic Muslim minority groups. The movie’s credits offer “special thanks” to a number of Chinese Communist Party and government agencies, including eight in Xinjiang, a mountainous frontier abutting Central Asia that about 12 million Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs regard as their homeland. Grant Major, the Oscar-winning production designer who worked on the film, said a small portion of the shooting took place in Xinjiang. Film shoots anywhere in China require permission from local authorities. Separatist sentiment has long simmered in Xinjiang, where resistance to Communist Party rule has at times flared into deadly attacks against symbols of Beijing’s authority and the country’s Han Chinese majority.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 08, 2020 17:39 UTC