Social Issues

Don’t be scared to stand up to China

On a recent visit to New Zealand, Chinese-Canadian actress and human rights campaigner Anastasia Lin urged the Government to stand up to China over human rights abuses. Lin told Newsroom’s Mark Jennings that China is a ‘paper tiger’ and western countries have more leverage than they think.

Every day for the last 20 years a small group of protestors have stood outside the Chinese consulate on Great South Road in the Auckland suburb of Greenlane. They are there whether it is hot, freezing, or raining.

Mostly, they are Falun Gong.

In China, members of this spiritual movement are persecuted by the Communist party and many end up in Labour camps where they are tortured until they sign a document agreeing not to practice Falun Gong.

It is euphemistically called “transformation” by CCP officials.

Those who refuse to sign declarations risk an even worse fate – they can end up forfeiting their internal organs.

The harvested organs are transplanted into influential Chinese or wealthy foreigners who want to avoid the waiting lists in their own countries.

Chinese hospitals who specialise in these transplants say the organs come from executed criminals but there is strong evidence (there are many more transplants than executed prisoners) that organs are also harvested from political prisoners including Uyghurs, Tibetans, underground Christians and members of the Falun Gong.

The small group of protestors outside the consulate in Auckland try to draw attention to Chinese organ trafficking but they are largely ignored. Like most perennial protestors, they have simply become part of the local landscape.

Sensing their lack of impact, local Falun Gong tried something different to draw attention to the issue.

They brought Chinese born Canadian actress, Anastasia Lin, to New Zealand and screened a controversial dramatised documentary that she stars in called ‘The Bleeding Edge’.

The film is a harrowing account of a young mother (Lin) who is caught distributing Falun Gong material and thrown in prison. She is tortured but refuses to sign the ‘transformation’ document. Eventually, she dies when her organs are ripped out of her body while she is still alive.

The documentary finishes with an audio recording of a real Chinese policeman who says he stood guard while organs were removed from a political prisoner who was not anaesthetised.

Lin says she decided to become an activist after filming the scene where she was strapped to a table and a doctor simulated cutting her open.

“To prepare for the role I talked to labour camp survivors about how they were tortured with electric shock batons and bamboo (spikes) under the nails.

“They told me about what happens when you go on a hunger strike. They force feed you and they also pour boiling water down the tube to cause terrible pain.

“But it was the feeling of being tied down on the table that drove the horror home to me.”

Lin started questioning what was happening in China when she was a thirteen-year-old living in Toronto.

Her mother, a university professor, had brought home a newspaper which referred to the Tiananmen square massacre in Beijing.

Lin and her mother had immigrated to Canada after her parents split up.

“It was a revelation, I didn’t know there had been a massacre. When I was at school in China, I was a youth leader and I showed my class a film about people self-immolating in Tiananmen square. I was very proud of doing it. Only the best – those who will become the elite of the Communist party – can be a youth leader.

“After reading about Tiananmen in the newspaper, I went online to find out more about what happened. What I found really changed me.”

Anastasia Lin stands alongside Tibetan protesters. Photo: Supplied

In a tactic pioneered by Iranian-Canadian entertainer Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Lin used the Miss World competition as a platform to express her views.

Afshin-Jam was Miss World Canada in 2003 and successfully campaigned to save the life of an 18-year-old Iranian women who was sentenced to death after she stabbed one of three men who raped her.

Lin won the title in 2015 but was refused a visa to enter China where the international final was being held.

The ‘Miss World’ organisation tried to prevent journalists from interviewing Lin but her story was picked up by global media and led the front page of the New York Times when she tried to enter China through Hong Kong.

Their message might be the same, but the Canadian actress provided a striking contrast to the local protesters who huddle outside the Auckland consulate in yellow raincoats or floppy sun hats holding up handwritten signs.

Lin appeared on TVNZ’s breakfast show, went on a talkback radio station and was interviewed by Stuff.co.nz.

She is highly critical of her own country’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who she says will do whatever he can to appease China.

“Like other Western leaders he thinks that China will change if you engage with it, go along with it and don’t criticise it. But appeasement will never work, it’s not going to change the political process.

“China is a ‘paper tiger’ – they (CCP) will shout and threaten you but they will only push it further if you show weakness.

“We have a lot more leverage than we think. China relies on trade with the west to keep its middle class stable. There needs to be an alliance all around the world, we need to stand up together.

“Change has to come from the Chinese people but we need to show them that we will stand with them, they need to see that we have a spine.”

Lin wants western countries to follow the lead of Taiwan, Spain and Israel and pass laws that discourage their citizens from travelling to China for organ transplants. She also says that Chinese doctors, nurses and policemen should be refused entry visas.

“This would bring a lot more pressure from ordinary Chinese to stop organ harvesting. To stop people being killed for money.”

Asked if she feared for her own safety, Lin said she knew that the Chinese monitored her activities and that her phone calls had been listened to but she felt protected by the media attention.

Her father, a successful businessman, who still lives in China had been “threatened by police” and had asked her “not to discuss human rights with him”.

Despite the efforts of activists like Lin and the regular protests outside Chinese embassies and consulates, China has continued its clampdown on religious freedoms.

Earlier this year a new law was enacted to give the state control over every aspect of religious practice. Amnesty International says it could be used to further suppress the rights of Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners who continue to be subjected to arbitrary detention, unfair trials and torture.