The remake of Disney’s ‘Mulan’ is facing new boycott calls after it was discovered that some of the film’s scenes were filmed in China’s controversial Xinjiang, reported news agency AFP. Xinjiang came to limelight after footage showing widespread rights abuses against the region’s Muslim population were shared.

The latest furore sparked after viewers noticed the “special thanks” section in the end credits, where Disney had thanked eight government entities in Xinjiang — including the public security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang where multiple internment camps have been documented. Another entity thanked was the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department in Xinjiang.

The film which follows the story of a legendary female warrior had already found itself in a political controversy after actor Liu Yifei voiced her support for the Hong Kong Police, who have been witnessed cracking down democracy protests in 2019.

The revelation has sparked renewed anger at a time of heightened scrutiny over Hollywood’s willingness to bow to authoritarian China.

Rights groups, academics and journalists have exposed a harsh crackdown against Uighur and Kazakh Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass internments, enforced sterilisations, forced labour as well as intense religious and movement restrictions.

Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, said the film was now “arguably Disney’s most problematic movie” since “Song of the South” — a 1946 glorification of antebellum plantation life that the company has since pulled.

“It’s sufficiently astonishing that it bears repeating,” he wrote in a Washington Post column.

“Disney has thanked four propaganda departments and a public security bureau in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China that is the site of one of the world’s worst human rights abuses happening today.”

Badiucao, a dissident Chinese artist living in Melbourne, said he was currently working on a new cartoon portraying Mulan as a guard at one of the internment camps in Xinjiang to satirise Disney’s new film.

“It’s very problematic and there’s no excuse. I mean, it’s clear, we have all the evidence showing what is going on in Xinjiang,” he told AFP.

Baduicao accused Disney of “double standards”, embracing western social justice movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, while turning a blind eye to China’s rights abuses.

The live-action remake of Disney’s 1998 animation classic, “Mulan” has had a troubled release.

The $200 million movie was meant to hit global theatres in March but became an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic. Later, it was released on OTT platforms.