I used to associate Mulan with happy times in my childhood when my mother would tirelessly rewind the tape for me to watch after school every day. Now when I think of the Disney film I think of when I went back home to Hong Kong at the height of the protests.

On November 12 last year, a day after a police officer shot an unarmed protester and tear gas was fired into university campuses, I met my friend in Central, Hong Kong’s Oxford Street. We joined a lunchtime protest.

I never once felt unsafe when surrounded by protesters. It was only when the police showed up in riot gear that I was terrified. Later, my friend and I were pinned down in an alcove after police began firing tear gas into an intersection, both of us vomiting, with eyes streaming. A businessman, protesting on his lunch break, came towards us. As I reached him, he shoved his face mask into my hands because I didn’t have my own. I learned to carry them everywhere after that.

Amnesty has criticised the Hong Kong Police Force for “an alarming pattern of deploying reckless and indiscriminate tactics”, with accounts of beatings, torture and sexual assault against protesters. Last November, a report revealed 88 per cent of Hong Kong’s population had been exposed to 6,000 rounds of tear gas.

I’m telling you this because, for Hong Kong, the new Mulan movie is another battleground. The Disney remake’s lead actress Liu Yifei wrote on a Chinese app after clear incidents of police brutality: “I support the Hong Kong police; you can beat me up now.” Below it, in English, she wrote: “What a shame for Hong Kong #ISupportTheHongKongPolice.”

Later, when people in Hong Kong announced a film boycott, Chinese state-run media launched the campaign, Defend justice, support Mulan. Yifei has since remained deliberately vague about her position in interviews, as Disney remains even more vague saying that “her politics are her own”.

But we need to talk about the politics of Mulan because the original Disney film is political.

It’s a story of a girl who fights injustice when her injured father is conscripted into the army, breaking the law by taking his place. Even after being discovered and punished for her actions, she continues to do what she thinks is right and saves the country in the process.

Doing what is right historically has major consequences in China. Activists fighting for the plight of the Uighur Muslim community imprisoned in Xinjiang have had their families threatened. Len Wenliang, the doctor who first alerted the world to coronavirus, was punished for whistleblowing.

I don’t doubt that Mulan will do exceptionally well in China. It’s been built for a mainland Chinese audience, between casting Yifei (an established actress) and revising it to look like a historical Chinese war epic.

But I have to boycott the film because what people back home are fighting for, in spite of the repercussions, is more important. The Mulan I remember probably would have too.