Twitter is trending
with hashtags like #BoycottMulan
since the 4^th of September. The problem can be traced back to the
summer of 2019 when Liu Yifei, the actress playing Mulan, showed support for the
police forces in Hong Kong. The comments were passed around the same time when
the general population was protesting against the new set of policies
suggesting citizens be extradited to mainland China.

The young actress used
a Chinese social media platform to convey this message: “I support Hong Kong’s police, you can beat me up now. What a shame for
Hong Kong.”

This comment hurt the
sentiments of many emotionally charged people for various reasons. The most
obvious reason of them all was the fact that this protest was pro-democracy –
and anybody who supported the police force at the time was speaking against it.

These protest created
uproar all over the world and even impacted the course of the NBA when the Houston
Rockets General Manager made a tweet supporting the protests. Due to this
reason, his partner in China refused to work for two pre-season games.

In addition to this,
Apple banned HK Map Live, as a result of which it ended up becoming the most
used app by the protestors in Hong Kong.

Earlier this year, Liu
was asked to comment on the subject by The Hollywood Reporter to which she
responded: “It’s obviously a very
complicated situation, and I’m not an expert. I just really hope this gets
resolved soon … I think it’s just a very sensitive situation.”

Alan Horn, the chairman
of Disney Studio, said: “Disney wants to
remain non-political, apolitical when it comes to all this stuff. My feeling is,
free speech is an important component of society, certainly, and folks ought to
be able to say what they want to say. I can’t speak for what Liu says in China
— we didn’t know about it, what she was going to say — and that’s up to them.”

All of this happened
before the release of Mulan. And then the pandemic happened (still on-going)
and everybody thought we’ll forget and forgive. Not in this case.

Alan had previously
mentioned that it was essential that Mulan worked in China as it has a much
bigger audience. And Disney is in hot waters, it seems.
Protestors all over the world are demanding and trending hashtags like
#BoycottDisney so as to bring attention towards the insensitive comments made
by its lead actress.

One of the activists
Joshua Wong has tweeted:

“Because
Disney kowtows to Beijing, and because Liu Yifei openly and proudly endorses
police brutality in Hong Kong, I urge everyone who believes in human rights to
#BoycottMulan.”

After finding out a portion of the movie was filmed in Xinjiang, protestors have asked people to
neither go to the theatre nor purchase the film on Disney Plus.

So far, Mulan has
earned $6 million through its limited theatrical release in Malaysia,
Singapore, and Thailand. The movie is expected to release on 11^th September
in China.