The beauty queen takes on Beijing
Miss World Canada 2015 says China is blocking her from attending pageant because of political stances
Anastasia Lin’s crowning as Miss World Canada 2015 has come with another title that could bar her from next month’s international pageant in Sanya, China: enemy of the state.
The Scarborough resident says she is being singled out by Beijing for her Falun Gong sympathies, as well as public speeches she has made against religious persecution and the importance of freedom of thought.
Local authorities in her native country are refusing to issue the invitation letter that Lin needs to obtain a visa by Friday or face disqualification by Miss World.
Organizers with the pageant’s headquarters in London, England — which owns and manages the international Miss World finals — have told Lin that it has nothing to do with the pageant.
“I don’t really feel like there’s anything between the Chinese government and me,” Lin, 25, said on the phone from her Scarborough home.
The London organization says contestants are told that obtaining a visa is their own responsibility. In the past, some participants have been unable to compete because they were denied visas, which was the case when Miss World was held in London last year.
“If we cancel or move the show each time a visa was not granted for a contestant then it would be impossible to plan the event,” the organization said in an email. “This is why it is a condition of entry to Miss World that each contestant is eligible for a visa to the host country.”
Lin says if not all the contestants can attend, then “China should not be qualified to host this competition and Miss World should move. It’s a matter of principle.”
Chinese media initially covered Lin’s crowning in May as Miss World Canada as a local-girl-makes-good story, but she says the articles quickly disappeared after news of her past surfaced.
The theatre arts graduate, who moved to Toronto from Vancouver in 2008 to attend U of T, has acted in film and television productions critical of her homeland, including its treatment of Falun Gong. The spiritual practice is considered a cult in China, where it is banned. Known members are sent to prison camps and tortured.
Lin met members growing up in Vancouver and later, during her research for film and TV roles. Some victims of perse- cution worked on the productions.
In 2013, the actor entered the Miss World Canada beauty pageant for the first time and placed third. During the talent portion of the show, Lin, a classically trained pianist, played a song written by a Falun Gong member and dedicated the piece to “those who lost their life for their faith and the millions of people still fighting for their faith today.”
Two years later, when she entered the pageant again and won, Lin defended religious freedom as well as freedom of expression.
Within days of winning, her father — who still lives in China in her home province of Hunan — received threats from government security agents. He sent her a text insisting she end all of her political and human-rights activities or he would cut off contact, she says.
His reaction shocked her. “My dad has been a major support for me in every way possible.”
Undeterred, Lin wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post, titled “I won Miss World Canada. But my work puts my father at risk in China.”
Since then, Lin has travelled to Poland as an observer of that country’s October election and to Taiwan to testify in parliament about religious persecution in China. She has publicized her plight during a speaking engagement at a British think-tank.
She said if China won’t give her a visa, then she will marshal forces with other human-rights activists and launch a campaign.
“I’m feeling all of this pressure,” said Lin. “It’s crazy. You’re dealing with a state machine all by yourself.
“But if everybody did it together — if Miss World can take a stand, if the Olympic committee can take a stand — then this will stop. China won’t bully people like this anymore.” The education of Anastasia Lin Anastasia Lin’s early life is a foil to the one she lives now.
Lin grew up in Communist China with a “tiger mom.” Her mother put Lin in elementary school two years early and in lessons to become a classical pianist.
“(My mother) wanted me to have a stable life that doesn’t have complexity,” said Lin. “I guess she’s quite surprised right now.”
From a young age, Lin’s mother would take her up the mountain where they lived in Changsha and make her yell English words from the top, to reduce her accent.
When Lin was 2, her mother would make her practise calligraphy on the stone floor of the Yuelu Academy, a 1,000-year-old academy close to Hunan University, where her mother was an economics professor.
Lin’s parents divorced when she was 5 or 6. She says her father contin- ued to support her and her mother when they emigrated.
As an elementary school pupil, Lin grew up longing to be part of the “red scarf” elite, the group of elementary students who were recruited to join the Young Pioneers of China Communist group and who were allowed to wear the garment.
In high school, she joined the student council and helped spread propaganda about Falun Gong.
“I didn’t know part of (council’s) job was to talk about what the party wants,” said Lin. She helped organize a viewing of an anti-Falun Gong video and afterwards, students were encouraged to raise their hands and say how much they hated the group.
“This is the sad thing,” said Lin. “When I was there, I did not think it was wrong at all.”
Lin moved with her mother to Surrey, B.C., in 2006.
She said she was “completely shocked” when she found out about the group’s religious persecution. The group was outlawed in 1999.
After moving to Toronto for university, she began taking roles depicting corruption in China — as a girl who died in an 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, one of thousands who were killed because of the shoddy construction of schools there — and in stories about the merciless persecution of Falun Gong.
Lin laughingly said she had a “monopoly” on the roles because no one else wanted parts that were critical of Beijing and could endanger their ability to return home.
She describes her entry into the Miss World Canada pageant as a “coincidence.” Lin was 16 when she attended a lecture in Vancouver and met human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam — who would later marry politician Peter MacKay — who won Miss World Canada in 2003.
The pageant idea began as a way to gain a platform. The notion became concrete after the sudden death of a 70-year-old woman, a survivor of religious persecution in a Chinese labour camp, who had worked with Lin on a low-budget film about prisoners of conscience.
“That was really heartbreaking for me,” said Lin. “It was the first person I knew that passed away because of these things.”
In May, she won Miss World Canada despite receiving a mark of zero from two Chinese judges. (Those scores were discarded.)
Now, as she waits to see if she will be allowed to go to the international competition in Sanya, she says she worries about what it could mean for her father, a Chinese businessman.
“One of my biggest fears is if I go back they will use my father to threaten me,” said Lin. “My parents are not involved in these things. None of them are touched with the human-rights work or Falun Gong or anything like that.”
If she is allowed by China to attend, she says she won’t criticize the government, although she says she’d like to speak about freedom of thought.
“I was thinking,” said Lin. “Am I going to talk about religious persecution going on in China? I was thinking they’re probably going to cut off the live broadcast and grab me off the stage.
“I’m not this hero type of person. I’m actually a quite moderate person just like my mom wanted me to be — a pianist.”