Congressman Jim Banks (R-IN), a member of the Select Committee on China, has sent a letter to Disney executives, slamming them for dropping out of a scheduled meeting with victims of the ongoing genocide against ethnic minorities in China.
Banks recalled the 2020 controversy of Disney executives working alongside Chinese government agencies that were involved in the genocide and suggested that the executives could benefit from hearing from genocide victims.
The letter, which was signed by four other members of the Select Committee on China, including Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI), was addressed to Disney CEO Robert Iger. It said that Disney's decision to film its live action remake of the movie "Mulan" in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) was met with condemnation from lawmakers and human rights activists, but Disney executives were unapologetic and even thanked several Chinese government agencies that are complicit in the genocide in the movie credits.
"For years, Chinese dissidents and human rights watchdogs have called attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s mass detainment, sterilization and enslavement of millions of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in the XUAR," the letter from Banks said. "It strains credulity that Disney was unaware of the genocide occurring around its film sets when 'Mulan' reportedly began production in XUAR in 2018."
Banks called for Disney executives to take action to correct their course.
“Disney executives pulled out of an off-the-record meeting with Uyghur genocide victims,” Banks said. “It couldn’t have been to protect Disney’s public image or bottom line, so maybe the executives were just worried about a good night’s sleep. Whatever the reason, Disney publicly praised Chinese Communist Party agencies committing genocide and then privately scorned their victims. It’s time for Disney to own up to its mistakes and make amends.”
The letter said that Disney explicitly thanked China's Public Security Bureau of Turpan, which in 2019 had been put on the Commerce Department’s Entity List for "human rights violations and abuses” committed against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. The letter said that Banks and the other lawmakers recently became aware that Disney executives had initially agreed to meet with Uyghur advocacy groups and families of genocide victims in an off-the-record meeting, but Disney "suddenly cut off the correspondence and ignored the groups’ further inquiries."
The letter highlighted Uyghur Human Rights Project Chairman Nury Turkel, who testified about the ongoing genocide in a congressional hearing in March. "You and other Disney executives would benefit greatly from his expertise," the letter said.
The lawmakers encouraged Iger and other Disney executives to reach out to Banks' office to schedule a meeting with Uyghur activists. "We have no doubt that such a meeting would prove educational for your company and would be a simple first step in clarifying to millions of Americans that Disney does, in fact, care about the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic extermination of minority ethnic groups," the letter said.
Turkel, a Uyghur American born in the Xinjiang region, said in his testimony during the March 23 hearing that the genocide against Uyghurs is now entering its seventh active year, Federal Newswire reported.
"Millions of people are still suffering, totally apart from the still-uncounted deaths in custody. It’s a somber indictment of our own failures to prioritize efficient responses to atrocity crimes," Turkel said. He called the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Uyghurs "the most sophisticated genocide in the modern era, supported by technology and facilitated through forced labor programs. It is the largest incarceration of ethnoreligious groups since the Nazi era." The hearing marked the sixth time Turkel has testified in front of Congress since 2018.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on Aug. 31 addressing concerns dating back to 2017 that members of the Uyghur community and other ethnic minorities in China had disappeared, been sent to "re-education" camps in XUAR or been subjected to forced labor, sexual violence or other abuse.
OHCHR assessed these allegations by analyzing official documents and satellite imagery and conducting interviews with 40 people "with direct and first-hand knowledge of the situation in XUAR." The people interviewed by OHCHR who had been detained in "Vocational Education and Training Centers" (VETC) said that they did not have access to a lawyer at any time in the process and they were not given an alternate option, despite claims from the Chinese government that VETC facilities were an alternative to jail time, according to the report.
All of the interviewees said they were not allowed to leave the facilities and visit home. Approximately half of the interviewees were allowed occasional visits or phone calls to family members under heavy surveillance, while the other half said they had no contact with their families, who did not know their location.
Based on these accounts, the OHCHR determined that the usage of VETC facilities constitutes a form of deprivation of liberty, which, according to international human rights law, cannot be arbitrary. Two-thirds of the detainees interviewed by OHCHR described "treatment that would amount to torture and/or other forms of ill-treatment, either in VETC facilities themselves or in the context of processes of referral to VETC facilities," according to the report.
The detainees described being beaten with batons, including with electric batons while strapped to a chair, being interrogated while water was poured on their faces, being held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time and being forced to sit on small stools for long periods of time without moving. Many of the interviewees described being constantly hungry, losing significant amounts of weight, being deprived of sleep and not being allowed to speak their native language or practice religion, including praying.
Additionally, the interviewees said they had to memorize "red songs" and other official material of the Chinese Communist Party, with one former detainee saying, "We were forced to sing patriotic song after patriotic song every day, as loud as possible and until it hurts, until our faces become red and our veins appeared on our face.” Most of the interviewees also said they were forced to take unknown medications regularly during detention.
