Anastasia Lin – a Falun Gong follower – says she was prevented from boarding her connecting flight from Hong Kong

A Canadian beauty pageant winner claims she has been barred from entering China to take part in the Miss World 2015 final in the southern island province of Hainan.

Anastasia Lin, a 25-year-old Chinese-born actor who was crowned Miss World Canada in May, is an outspoken critic of Chinese religious policy and a follower of the meditative group Falun Gong, which is banned in China.



The Toronto-based theatre studies student said she was unable to board her connecting flight from Hong Kong after a Chinese official told her by telephone she would not be granted a visa on arrival.



“If they start to censor beauty pageants how pathetic is that?” she told the Associated Press in Hong Kong.



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The University of Toronto graduate has been vocal about Chinese political repression both before and following her ‘coronation’ in Vancouver in May. She has raised the issue of abuses of practitioners of Falun Gong, a Chinese “qigong” spiritual and meditative practice with elements of Buddhism that the Chinese Communist party has campaigned to suppress since 1999, often brutally, and which remains illegal in China.



She has previously aired concerns that her rising public profile had seen her targeted for speaking out, and that the Chinese have sought to prevent her competing in the beauty pageant final, being held in Sanya city on Hainan island.



Unlike the other contestants, she said, she had not received an invitation letter from the Chinese allowing her to get the necessary visa to compete.



In a message on what is believed to be her Twitter feed, and using the hashtag #AfraidOfABeautyQueen, Lin posted: “I’m in Hong Kong, but the Chinese government has barred me from getting the next flight to Sanya for Miss World.”



Anastasia Lin (@AnastasiaLinTO) I'm in Hong Kong, but the Chinese government has barred me from getting the next flight to Sanya for Miss World. #AfraidOfABeautyQueen

In a linked Facebook statement, Lin said she had arrived in Hong Kong early on Thursday morning en route to Sanya, but had been refused permission to board a plane.



“Unlike all other Miss World contestants, I did not receive an invitation letter from the Chinese organisers of this event, and so was unable to obtain a visa in advance,” she wrote.



“I was never given an explanation as to why I did not receive the letter. Under Chinese law, however, Canadian citizens are eligible to obtain a landing visa upon arrival in Sanya, so I decided to try attending anyway.



“Unfortunately, I was prevented from boarding the plane from Hong Kong to Sanya. No reasons was given [for] the denial.”



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She continued: “The slogan of the Miss World competition is: ‘Beauty with a purpose’. My purpose is to advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves – those who suffer in prisons and labor camps, or whose voices have been stifled by repression and censorship.”



Lin, who plays an imprisoned Falun Gong practitioner in an upcoming Canadian film The Bleeding Edge, moved to Canada from China with her mother when she was 13.



On the eve of her departure for the beauty contest China appeared to have declared Lin “persona non grata”, according to Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail. The paper reported it had inquired about Lin’s status in an email to the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. A spokesman had reportedly responded: “China does not allow any persona non grata to come to China.” The statement did not mention Lin by name.



Lin recently claimed that after she won Miss World Canada, Chinese security agents had visited her father, who still lives in Hunan province in China, in an apparent attempt to intimidate him.



In an interview with the Guardian, she said she had received a text message from her father asking her to stop her human rights activities.

She said he had told her the security forces had approached him and he felt there would be consequences. Already a business deal her father was making had fallen through because his business partner was scared off, she said.



While Canada’s newly elected government has renewed the country’s support for her efforts to raise awareness of human rights violations in China, it has said it was unable to assist her in getting a visa.



She testified about China’s treatment of Falun Gong practitioners before a US congressional committee in July and was part of a Canadian ministerial working group.



It was a “very personal cause” to her, she said. In her lengthy Facebook post, she wrote: “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. It was only after I moved to Canada that I discovered what it meant to think freely, to use my own mind, and to live without fear of arbitrary punishment or reprisal.”



Her path has led her to start practising Falun Gong, she said.



She was passionate about being a voice for the voiceless, she said. “It is why I have continued speaking up even after Chinese security agents visited my father and sought to intimidate him. It is why I kept going even after I didn’t receive the invitation letter from the Chinese organisers of the Miss World final. I owed it to all those who don’t have a voice to at least try.



“That is why I tried to go to Sanya. As the Canadian representative to Miss World, I have every right to be there and take my place among the contestants and share my message.”

In her Facebook post, Lin said barring her entry was not conduct befitting a “superpower”, especially one that hosts international competition such as Miss World and hoped to host the upcoming Winter Olympics.

“Silencing beauty queens, censoring journalists and torturing [those with] religious beliefs is not a sign of strength – it is a sign of profound weakness and insecurity.”