Beauty and the Chinese Beast

A beauty queen speaks out about China, and causes tensions at Miss World
By Maura Judkis

Anastasia Lin in a photo taken last year when she was first crowned Miss World Canada — but was unable to compete at the international pageant in China because the government denied her a visa.

Everything seemed to be going well for Miss Canada, Anastasia Lin, during an interview Wednesday promoting the Miss World pageant — until she was asked whether she would be attending a screening of her new movie, which has reportedly enraged officials in her native China.
Lin shot a glance at the four pageant officials assigned to listen in.
“You can ask them,” she told a Washington Post reporter.
One of the officials maintained that Lin could go “if she has spare time” but that she hadn’t yet asked to go.
That’s when things got testy, Lin noting sharply that the screening’s hosts had repeatedly sent requests on her behalf, her handlers insisting she just needed to abide by "certain" protocols.
It was a tempered explosion of the tensions surrounding Lin’s presence at the beauty contest, taking place Sunday at the new MGM National Harbor casino complex in Maryland.
Miss Canada has found herself at odds with Miss World organizers, in a conflict stretching back more than a year regarding her advocacy work against human rights abuses in China — historically, a major sponsor and booster of the pageant.
Lin, 26, a resident of Canada since she was 13, was supposed to represent the country in the 2015 pageant in Sanya, China.
But Chinese authorities denied her a visa because of her political activity and support of Falun Gong, the Buddhist-inflected spiritual movement that has been banned by the government since 1999.
Lin at a press conference in Hong Kong last year. Miss World invited her to compete this year, with the pageant being held in the U.S.

With the pageant moving this year to the United States, organizers offered her another shot at the crown.
Lin signed on, saying she carried no grudge about last year.
“In all fairness, they were in China with 130 girls,” she told The Post on Wednesday.
“For anyone to take a principled stand, it’s not easy.”
But tensions have remained.
The New York Times reported Tuesday night that pageant officials had barred Lin from speaking to the media. 
A Boston Globe reporter attempted to talk to Lin this month, and was sent away.
Meanwhile, Lin recently had a starring role — as a Falun Gong practitioner who is jailed and tortured — in “The Bleeding Edge,” a movie that portrays Chinese political prisoners forced to undergo organ harvesting. 
The D.C.-based Victims of Communism Memorial was scheduled to host a screening Wednesday night, but attempts to invite Lin had been thwarted by the pageant, the Times reported.
And yet Wednesday, after the Times story appeared, Miss World officials made Lin available for a previously requested interview with The Washington Post.
She spoke candidly in front of her handlers about consequences of her advocacy.
Lin’s father still lives in China, and, as she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post last year, he has faced intense pressure from state-owned media and banks, and his business and morale have suffered.
“To the point of self-harm,” she said.
Lin said she recently received a series of alarming text messages but would not elaborate.
“I believe he is in stable condition right now,” she said.
“I can understand why he feels like he can’t take it anymore.”
The pageant allowed Lin to meet at the State Department with David Saperstein, the ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, to talk about her father.
“Because it’s still a very fluid situation in China, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.
Four representatives of the pageant — publicist Veronica Jeon and three others who did not give names — sat in on Lin’s interview, which included another contestant and the reigning Miss World, Mireia Lalaguna.
In front of them, Lin said that she was not being silenced.
“The first two weeks, I don’t know what happened, but I’m talking to you now, so that’s all that’s important,” she said.
Still, the tension was clear.
One of the pageant officials maintained that all contestants simply needed to “run it by us” if they wanted to see visitors or speak to the media, “so it doesn’t interrupt any rehearsal time [or] doing a specific event.”
“Uh, well, I wish I had known that two weeks ago when the Boston Globe journalist got kicked out,” Lin said, obviously vexed but maintaining a beauty-queen composure.
The official said that the reporter “didn’t ask for the necessary steps to go and meet her.”
“Uh, he did,” Lin said, “sending two requests before we even came here.”
The pageant has forged close ties to China, which has hosted Miss World seven times since 2000. Chinese companies have sponsored the pageant lavishly, and the city of Sanya built a special theater for it.
This year’s pageant, though, is “self-financed,” Jeon said.
Julia Morley, the pageant’s longtime chief executive, was not available for comment.
Lin said that even if she doesn’t win, the most important thing is her presence on that stage.
“This show is going to be broadcast to China,” said Lin.
“For them to be able to see me on a screen and see that I haven’t given up, I haven’t forgotten, and then their voice can be heard is — it’s very important for me and for a lot of people who I have spoken to.”

Miss World Contestant Who Challenged China Is Allowed to Speak Once More

Forced organ harvesting: “China does not have a viable voluntary transplant system, so someone has to die... It’s not like the organs grow on plants.”

By ANDREW JACOBS

Anastasia Lin, Canada’s Miss World entrant, spoke out about murky, government-sanctioned organ transplant programs in China. 

Anastasia Lin, the Miss World contestant whose advocacy for victims of human right abuses in China has infuriated Beijing, appears to have regained her voice.
On Wednesday evening, pageant organizers gave Ms. Lin, a Chinese-born Canadian, the green light to speak to the news media, ending a three-week standoff in Washington that had drawn unflattering attention to a storied beauty pageant that has become increasingly dependent on Chinese corporate sponsors.
According to friends and relatives of Ms. Lin’s, employees of the British-owned beauty pageant had warned her that she would be ejected from the competition if she spoke publicly about China's government-sanctioned transplant programs that rely heavily on the organs of murdered prisoners of conscience.

In a brief phone interview, Ms. Lin, 26, declined to discuss whether she had been silenced and praised the Miss World Organization for allowing her to compete in the finals, which will be televised Sunday night and are expected to draw a global audience of one billion. 

“To their credit, they did give me this platform, and I’m able to speak freely now,” she said.
She also said the pageant’s executive director, Julia Morley, had given her permission to attend the premiere of a feature film, “The Bleeding Edge,” that stars Ms. Lin and seeks to dramatize the cruelties of Chinese government-run programs that harvest the organs of prisoners.
In an emailed statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Ms. Morley said she had never barred Ms. Lin from the premiere, which is scheduled for Wednesday night in Washington. 

The event is sponsored by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Last year, China blocked Ms. Lin from attending the Miss World finals in Sanya, the southern Chinese resort city that has hosted the finals a half-dozen times since 2003. 

She said pageant officials had made little effort to intervene on her behalf, but they allowed her to retain the Miss Canada title for another year, paving the way for her participation in the 2016 finals.
Ms. Lin sought to focus the interview on her project, which aims to raise awareness about Beijing’s persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in China. 

Adherents face imprisonment, and those who refuse to renounce the movement are subjected to torture.
Ms. Lin and other experts say Falun Gong practitioners who die in custody are unwilling providers of organs for China’s lucrative transplant industry. 

“China does not have a viable voluntary transplant system, so someone has to die,” she said. 

“It’s not like the organs grow on plants.”
She has few illusions that her awareness campaign will make it past China’s strict censors, but she said her appearance in the finals might inspire others willing to stand up to the authorities.
During a visit to Taiwan this year, she described running into a tour group from mainland China. 

She was stunned, she said, when a number of people recognized her and then asked to be photographed by her side.
“Despite 60 years of censorship, people don’t believe everything they hear on the news,” she said, referring to Chinese reports over the past year that have sought to demonize her. 

“I may end up standing in the last row this year, but if they are able to see me, I hope people will be encouraged.”