Canada’s Miss World Has Been Stopped From Entering China For Pageant
Miss Lin was crowned Miss World Canada in May, and was due to attend the Miss World 2015 pageant in Sanya, China, in December.
Canada’s China-born Miss World contestant was stopped in Hong Kong on Thursday and denied permission to board a flight to the beauty pageant finals in China, a move she said was punishment for speaking out against human rights abuses in the country.
“There’s no comment from the Chinese embassy…so I realise that’s the tactics they’re using, they just want to let it die down”, said Lin, who was wheeling a silver suitcase and dressed in a long brown trench coat.
“He’s scared to get on the phone with me”, she said.
Lin said that she had been publicly critical of China’s religious policies and is a believer in Falun Gong, a spiritual group that is banned in China and which Beijing describes as a cult. The actress also plays an imprisoned practitioner of the outlawed Falun Gong sect in upcoming Canadian movie, The Bleeding Edge. They did not mention Ms Lin by name.
She said that although she has not received an invitation letter from the organisers, she chose to travel there anyway in hopes she would obtain a visa upon arrival.
In a statement posted on her personal blog Lin said she was unable to board her connecting flight from Hong Kong and she was given no explanation.
In July, she testified before the U.S. Congress, telling the hearing that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed so their organs could be harvested and sold for transplants.
Canadian news outlet, The Globe and Mail, contacted the Chinese embassy in Ottawa in an attempt to learn why Anastassia Lin was not being granted a visa and was told by a spokesman in an email that “China does not allow any persona non grata to come to China”. He has had business deals fall through because of her public activities and fears reprisal from the government as well.
She told USA lawmakers she “wanted to speak for those in China that are beaten, burned and electrocuted for holding to their beliefs – people in prison who eat rotten food with blistered fingers because they dare have convictions”. She was intending to compete in the beauty pageant finals.
Lin told The Guardian her stand against political repression already is affecting her family, including her father who still lives in China’s Hunan province.
“As the Canadian representative to Miss World, I have every right to be there and take my place among the other contestants and share my message”, Lin said.
“When I was a child growing up in China, my job as a student council president involved enforcing ideological purity among my classmates, organising them to watch Communist propaganda”.
Earlier this month, Lin was a guest speaker at an event advocating for religious freedom in China organized by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based pro-democracy British think tank.