Barbaric Men of Asia

The ugly truth about China’s organ harvesting
By Anastasia Lin

Actress/Beauty Queen Anastasia Lin denounces Chinese Organ Harvesting

The verdict is in: On June 17, the China Tribunal announced its finding that China’s Communist regime has for two decades practiced systematic, forced organ removal from prisoners of conscience, mainly Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims.
The independent, London-based panel of international legal and medical experts was led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who also headed the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
After unwilling donors are executed, the tribunal found, their organs are sold to Chinese or foreign “transplant tourists.” 

Before 2015, China, whose Confucian value system considers it important to keep the body ­intact after death, had no voluntary organ-transplant system. 

Yet Chinese hospitals perform some 60,000 to 90,000 transplant surgeries each year.
Chinese hospitals promise that they can deliver hearts, livers, kidneys and corneas of matching blood type and size in two weeks. 

The surgeries can be scheduled in advance, which suggests hospitals know exactly when the “donors” are going to die.  

By contrast, America has a highly developed voluntary organ-donation system, and recipients typically have to wait hundreds of days.
According to researchers, Chinese prison authorities subject detained Falun Gong practitioners to medical exams to determine the health of their organs (even as they routinely torture these same prisoners). 

Detained Uighur Muslims report similar medical examinations.
The tribunal also heard from Chinese medical personnel who have defected from the regime. 

They warned Western governments and medical practitioners of this ongoing atrocity.
It wasn’t easy. 

One researcher likened his work to examining the scene following a nuclear explosion. 

Chinese government agencies and hospitals never provide honest numbers, so investigators have to make inferences from evidence such as hospital-renovation notices, patient turnover rates and medical research papers to estimate how many transplants are performed at each hospital.
Beijing deletes all traces of evidence online, making preservation of available records vitally important to rights researchers.
I first grappled seriously with this issue when I starred in the 2016 film “The Bleeding Edge.” 

I played a ­Falun Gong practitioner imprisoned for her beliefs, who is tied to an operating table as her vital organs are removed to be sold for profit.
I later joined these courageous researchers and campaigners. 

We testified at legislative hearings to push for laws prohibiting foreigners from going to China for transplants and banning Chinese medical and police personnel from visiting the West.
It was an uphill battle. 

Although Israel and Taiwan both passed laws making it harder for their citizens to obtain transplants in China, other democratic governments were reluctant to acknowledge this crime against humanity, perhaps ­because doing so would imply an obligation to act immediately.
China launches vicious ad hominem attacks against critics, to undermine our credibility. 

Numerous screenings of my film, and of documentaries on the subject, have been canceled on university campuses and elsewhere following phones calls from Chinese diplomats.
A year ago I was booked to discuss organ harvesting on a prominent Western public broadcaster. 

A producer canceled the interview hours before I was due to go on air. 

My representative was told the order came from “higher up” and that my “affiliations” had disqualified me from talking on live TV. 

China’s state-run media called me a tool of a “cult” working with “anti-China forces” to spread lies.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and had their organs harvested since the practice was industrialized in 2000. 

The victims were Chinese citizens who wanted nothing more than to practice their beliefs in peace. Instead, they were killed by their government on an industrial scale.
For those of us who have fought to expose this crime against humanity, the tribunal’s verdict is an answer to a prayer. 

We had presented the free world with mounds of evidence but were repeatedly dismissed. 

How many crimes did China’s global partners ignore, because the truth was inconvenient? 

Now that the China Tribunal has concluded that organ harvesting is happening on a massive scale, and systematically documented the practice, there is no excuse left for inaction.

Beauty and the Chinese Beast

Barred from China and silenced in the US, this beauty queen isn't backing down
By James Griffiths

Anastasia Lin is barred from entering China and has been blocked from speaking out in the US.
Hong Kong -- Anastasia Lin just wanted her father to see her face.
Prevented from taking part in Miss World 2015 when China refused to allow her to enter the country, where the final was being held, she tried again this past December.
The Canadian was under no illusions about coming home with the 2016 crown. 

Getting on stage would be enough: the Miss World final is broadcast around the globe, including in her native China, where her father has been harassed and prevented from leaving.
In the end she appeared on screen for all of six seconds, during her introduction. 

For the rest of the show she was tucked away at the back of the crowd of contestants, or at the corners of the stage.
"It was really too naive to think that my father could see me," Lin said.
If she is slightly bitter, it's with good reason. 

Her sliver of screen time was bought with months of practice and rehearsal, and, most painfully for an outspoken human rights activist, her silence.
During the competition, Lin was placed under a communication blackout and forbidden from speaking to journalists, part of what analysts say is a pattern of western companies cooperating with China to silence critics overseas.
Miss World chairwoman Julia Morley said the organization did "our best to assist Miss Lin and have done absolutely nothing to prevent her doing everything she wanted to do."

Good little Communist

Chinese students wearing the uniform of the Young Pioneers.

Lin, 26, was born in China's Hunan province. 

As a child, she wore the iconic red scarf of the Young Pioneers and vowed to "struggle for the cause of Communism."
One of her duties in the state-run youth organization was to corral other children to watch propaganda broadcasts, which at the time were intently focused against Falun Gong.
The spiritual movement, which has roots in the ancient Chinese meditative martial art qigong, exploded in popularity in the 1990s, growing to an estimated 30 million members by the end of the decade, according to the US State Department.
In 1999, after upwards of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners staged a peaceful demonstration in Beijing -- the largest mass protest the Chinese capital had seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre a decade before -- the movement was banned and a brutal crackdown launched, with tens of thousands of people arrested.
Now a prominent spokeswoman against the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, Lin said she was largely unaware of the crackdown at the time. 

It wasn't until she moved to Canada at age 13 that she "learned that what were told in China was completely different to reality."

Contestants on stage during Miss World 2016 in Washington DC.
Speaking out
"I didn't start as an activist at all," Lin said.
As a teenager, she was focused on acting and modeling, eventually studying theater at the University of Toronto.
It was there that she was approached by a Chinese producer who was looking for someone to play the role of a student killed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. 

Thousands of children died during the disaster, as shoddily built schools collapsed on top of them.
"He said they couldn't find anyone to play this role, because it was too sensitive," Lin said. 

"I jumped on the opportunity."
Similar offers quickly followed: "At one point I really had a monopoly on these types of roles."
At the same time, she began competing in beauty pageants to raise her profile and get on-camera experience. 

She placed third in Miss World Canada in 2013, going on to win the competition outright in 2015.
That's when the trouble started.

Miss World contestant denied entry to China 02:13
Blocked
As Canadian champion, Lin was due to take part in Miss World 2015, to be held that year in Sanya, on China's southern island of Hainan. 

But as the event approached, her visa request went ignored and she was left hanging, unsure if she could take part in the competition.
She also began receiving distressing messages from her father, who still lives in China. 

Lin said he was approached by security officers and told that if she didn't "stop her political and human rights activities" her family members would be arrested.
These threats did not stop her speaking out -- "my personality is that I can't really hide things" -- but she and her father no longer talk due to fears for his safety.
Many activists have made similar allegations. 

Ilshat Hassan, president of the Uyghur American Association -- which advocates for members of China's Turkic-speaking Muslim minority -- told CNN last year that his family has faced repeated harassment over his activism. 

"Just months ago my mum says please stop what you're doing, or don't call us," he said.
Determined to at least try and take part in Miss World, Lin flew to Hong Kong -- where Canadians do not require a visa to enter -- and attempted to get a flight to Sanya.
"They declared me persona non grata and prevented me from boarding the plane," she said.
Her denial of entry was quickly reported worldwide, massively raising her profile, and earning her a denouncement in the state-run Global Times, which accused her of lacking "reasonable understanding of the country where she was born" and warned her against "being tangled with hostile forces against China."

Miss Puerto Rico Stephanie Del Valle (center) reacts after winning Miss World 2016.
Silenced
Given a second chance to participate in Miss World 2016, Lin vowed to toe the line, not wanting to be denied a place in the final again. 

"I wanted to do things by the book," she said.
Nevertheless, she chose as her "Beauty with a Purpose" project to shine the light on organ harvesting in China, a topic with which she had become familiar with after acting in the Canadian film "The Bleeding Edge."
In June, a report by former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann claimed, based on publicly reported figures by hospitals, that China was still engaged in the widespread and systematic harvesting of organs from prisoners, including prisoners of conscience.
Arriving in Washington DC, Lin received multiple media requests. 

Keen to play by the rules, she said she forwarded them all to Miss World officials, only to have them all initially denied, though several were later granted.
Lin was also angrily rebuked after an official spotted her chatting with a reporter in the lobby of her hotel.
"They said I was breaking rules, telling lies," she said. 

"I felt like a criminal."
During this period, at least six other contestants were allowed to give interviews.
After Miss World allowed her to give press interviews, Lin was still carefully monitored when talking to reporters.

Censorship
Western companies and governments are facing increasing pressure from Beijing as it attempts to sideline overseas critics, said Amnesty International researcher Patrick Poon.
CNN has previously reported how Beijing has reached across borders in its hunt for dissidents, working with cooperative governments to deport critics back to China.
Economic pressure has also been brought to bear on companies that depend on revenue from China.
Last week, Apple removed the New York Times from its Chinese app store on the grounds the paper's app "(violated) local regulations," a move anti-censorship activist Charlie Smith characterized as "actively enabling infringements of human rights."
"Foreign governments and foreign organizations should rethink whether what they have been doing in kowtowing to China's influence means that they compromise (dissidents') freedom of expression and freedom of movement," Poon said.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
Miss World's Morley denied Lin's accusations that her treatment was related to pressure from Beijing, pointing out that this year's competition, unlike Miss World 2015, did not have any Chinese sponsors.
Despite her experiences, Lin said she was grateful to the competition for giving her a platform.
"It's not Miss World's fault they're so nervous, they're a vulnerable pageant organization," Lin said. "The entire world is economically tied to China."

Miss World contender speaks out on China human rights

Miss Canada will be vying for more than the winner's tiara when she competes in the annual Miss World pageant in Washington this weekend
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON

Anastasia Lin, 26, Canada's entrant to Miss World beauty pageant, answers questions during her interview with the Associated Press, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016 in Oxon Hill, Md. Miss Canada will be vying for more than the winner’s tiara when she competes in the annual Miss World pageant in Washington this weekend. Lin wants to tell a global TV audience about the evil of organ-harvesting. Lin was due to compete at Miss World last year when it was hosted by China but was barred from entering the country due to her activism against persecution of Falun Gong, a meditation practice that she follows and China’s government has outlawed. 

WASHINGTON — Poised but defiant, Miss Canada will be vying for more than the winner's tiara when she competes in the annual Miss World pageant in Washington this weekend. 

Anastasia Lin wants to tell the world about the evil of organ-harvesting.
Lin was due to compete at Miss World last year when it was hosted by China but was barred from entering the country due to her activism against persecution of Falun Gong, a meditation practice that she follows and that China's government has outlawed.
U.K.-based Miss World is allowing her to compete again this year in the U.S. 

Miss World, which has Chinese corporate sponsorship, has prevented media organizations from speaking to Lin. 

But she was allowed to speak to The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday in which she spoke forthrightly about her cause, although she sidestepped questions about whether she had faced restrictions.
"Everybody is tied economically with China. China's soft power is so huge that no one really dares to speak up," said Lin, 26, at a hotel just outside Washington at the National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Lin, who was born in China and moved to Canada with her mother at age 13, has riled China's government with her public advocacy. 

She has alleged that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed so their organs could be harvested and sold for transplants. 

She has spoken out at a U.S. congressional hearing, and since her exclusion from last year's pageant in China, she has attracted world media attention and given testimony before the British and European parliaments. 

She says the Miss World pageant, in which contestants each present a cause or platform, is another opportunity to speak out and give people hope.
"I'm talking about organs being taken from prisoners of conscience, meaning citizens who have not done anything wrong but to speak their mind and believe what they believe in. It's like innocent citizens being killed for their organs and their body parts sold for profits. It's happening and people need to pay attention to it," Lin said.
The Chinese government outlawed Falun Gong in 1999, saying the group had attracted 70 million followers and was a threat to social stability. 

As of 2015, the government claimed it was ending the long-standing practice of involuntarily harvesting the organs of executed prisoners for use in donor transplants, and had replaced it with a "voluntary" donor system, but international medical professionals and human rights advocates question whether that has happened.
Lin said Falun Gong emphasizes "truthfulness, compassion and tolerance" and is persecuted because encourages independent thought.
Lin is also an actress. 

She played a Falun Gong prisoner and organ-harvesting victim in a Canadian-made movie, "The Bleeding Edge," which was screened late Wednesday at a theater in Washington by the activist group, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
In an apparent sign that the Miss World organization was easing constraints on her, Lin attended the screening.
She said that even Western governments are leery of criticizing China.
"Governments are not really speaking out, even for their Chinese citizens outside of China," she said. "Last year when I was banned, the Canadian government did not really take a stand," she said.
Lin said that her father, who lives in China, has faced severe pressure, including multiple lawsuits hurting his business selling medical equipment and has been prevented from traveling from China to attend the pageant. 

Beyond the promotional video on her social media feed, Lin said she'll only have a fleeting chance to speak out at the Miss World ceremonies, and that's only if she makes the top 10, but she's determined to stay the course.
"I'm going to stick here to the end because I know that this Miss World final is going to be watched by a billion people around the world, and it's going to be broadcast to China," she said. 

"I have traveled a long journey to (get) here and I want the people to see me on that show. I want them to see that I have not given up."

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.”

China's Crimes Against Humanity

Two movies China desperately wants to hide
By Jeff Jacoby

Canada's Miss World contestant Anastasia Lin speaks to media after she was denied entry to mainland China, at Hong Kong International Airport on Nov. 26, 2015.

This week, two extraordinary Canadian films — one a chilling documentary, the other a riveting drama based on its findings — were released for sale on iTunes. 

Directed by Leon Lee, the films illuminate what may be the most depraved of all systematic human-rights atrocities in the world today: China’s industrial-scale harvesting of vital organs from prisoners of conscience, to be transplanted into patients paying exorbitant fees for a heart, kidney, or liver made available on demand.
The documentary, “Human Harvest,” won the coveted Peabody Award for its exposé of an unspeakable crime against humanity. 

In 1999, Chinese hospitals began performing more than 10,000 organ transplants annually, generating a vast and lucrative traffic in “transplant tourists,” who flocked to China on the assurance that they could obtain lifesaving organs without having to languish on a waiting list. 

China had no voluntary organ-donation system to speak of, yet suddenly it was providing tens of thousands of freshly harvested organs to patients with ready cash or high-placed connections. 

How was that possible?
The evidence, assembled by human-rights researchers and investigative journalists, added up to something unimaginable: China was killing enormous numbers of imprisoned men and women by strapping them down to operating tables, still conscious, and forcibly extracting their organs — and then delivering those organs to the hospital transplant centers that have become a major source of revenue. 

Chinese officials claim that organs come from violent criminals on death row. 

But “Human Harvest” makes it clear that most of those killed are peaceful citizens persecuted for their beliefs: Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians — and, above all, practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddhist-style spiritual movement of peaceful meditation and ethical commitment.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), a peaceful and nonpolitical discipline, attracted millions of adherents across China during the 1990s. 

But in 1999, Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party, alarmed by the popularity of a belief system not controlled by the state, abruptly turned against it. 

Practitioners found themselves demonized as dangerous cultists; by the hundreds of thousands they were arrested and imprisoned, often subjected to ghastly torture until they “transformed” — i.e., until they signed a document renouncing Falun Gong. 

Many who wouldn’t died under the knife, literally butchered for their organs.
As awareness of China’s gruesome organ-harvesting crimes has spread, a few Western governments have moved to combat it through laws prohibiting citizens from traveling to China for transplants or barring insurance companies from covering it. 

In conferences and parliamentary hearings, activists have pressed for a comprehensive strategy to end to organ harvesting. 

But the best vehicle to arouse a massive audience to resist China’s massive evil is popular culture. Hence Lee’s newest movie: a feature-length thriller, “The Bleeding Edge.”
The film stars Anastasia Lin, a gifted Chinese-Canadian actress who also happens to be the reigning Miss World Canada. 

She plays Chen Jing, a young Falun Gong practitioner who is jailed and brutally tortured for her refusal to “transform.” 

A simultaneous plot line follows James Branton (played by Jay Clift), a hard-charging tech entrepreneur whose heart collapses while on a business trip to China to close a major deal with the government. 

Branton receives an emergency transplant that saves his life — and motivates him to find out how a suitable organ could have been located so quickly.
Lin drew international headlines last year when she was forbidden to enter China, where the 2015 Miss World pageant was being held. 

For Lin, who was born and lived in China until she was 13, beauty pageants are a means of calling attention to human-rights abuses in her native land, and Beijing was intent on denying her a Chinese platform from which to speak.
This year’s Miss World pageant is taking place in Washington, D.C. 

Lin is once again representing Canada. 

The competition’s motto is “Beauty with a Purpose,” and Lin’s purpose hasn’t wavered: to shed light on China’s terrible repression, particularly its inhuman treatment of those who practice Falun Gong.
“The Bleeding Edge” will be screened in Washington a few days before the Miss World final on Dec. 18, and the iTunes listing is timed to coincide with Lin’s bid for the crown. 

Far better, of course, would be a wide theatrical release, but no theater chain has agreed to show the movie. 

That isn’t because of any problem with the quality of the film — it is a gripping work, and Lin’s performance is haunting. 

But China’s regime exerts enormous leverage on the US movie industry. 

Studios are afraid to make films that may face resistance in the Chinese market, and major swaths of the American theater market, such as AMC Entertainment, are Chinese-owned subsidiaries.
When Beijing aims to stifle a message, it takes grit to push back. 

Lin’s father, who still lives in China, was threatened by security agents into severing his ties with a daughter he adores. 

A renowned Canadian fashion designer who was eager to provide dresses for Lin’s Miss World appearances abruptly backed out after allegedly receiving a warning from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. 

Lin has been told more than once that she is effectively blacklisted in Hollywood.
Making any film is challenging, but “The Bleeding Edge” has also had to contend with the roadblocks that come with Chinese enmity. 

Chinese-speaking cast and crew members who were supposed to work with Lee backed out for fear of endangering loved ones in China. 

Owners of venues where filming was to take place panicked when they heard actors rehearsing their lines. 

One potential distributor told Lee: “I am not keen on putting my head in China’s crosshairs... I really wish I could publicly attach my name to this, but too many of my paychecks are involved in Chinese funds.”
Yet Leon Lee and Anastasia Lin have not lost their resolve. 

Nor have they lost sight of their goal. 

They seek not fame or fortune for themselves, but liberty for China’s people and an end to an crime against humanity so evil that it could have been devised by Josef Mengele. 

China wants to quash “The Bleeding Edge.” 

All the more reason to view it.