Beijing: Canada's Miss World contestant has been denied entry into China in an apparent retaliation against her outspoken advocacy for human rights in the country.
Anastasia Lin, a 25-year-old actress and classically trained pianist, was stopped in Hong Kong on Thursday from boarding her connecting flight to Sanya, a resort town on the Chinese island of Hainan where this year's pageant finals are being held.
"My denial was unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. The Chinese government has barred me from the competition for political reasons," she said on Friday. "They are trying to punish me for my beliefs and prevent me from speaking out about human rights issues."
Ms Lin, who was born in China but moved to Canada aged 13, had not been explicitly banned from the competition, but unlike other contestants who had already arrived in the country, she had not received a visa.
She left Toronto hoping to obtain a visa upon arrival usually available to Canadian citizens, but was told in a phone interview with a customs official in Sanya that she would not be granted entry.
Ms Lin is a practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement which is banned and branded as a subversive cult by Chinese authorities. She has used her profile since winning Canada's Miss World title in May to highlight human rights abuses in China, including testifying at a US congressional hearing on religious persecution in China in July.
"China does not allow any persona non grata to come to China," Yang Yundong, a Chinese embassy spokesman in Ottawa, told Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail. "I simply do not understand why some people pay special attention to this matter and have raised it repeatedly."'
Days after winning the Miss Canada contest in Vancouver, Ms Lin said security agents visited her father, who remains in mainland China, threatening him to persuade her to rein in her human rights activism.
"Many people have asked me why I have continued speaking out after my father was threatened. The answer is simple: If I allow myself to be intimidated, then I am complicit in continued human rights abuses," she said in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post earlier this year.
I'm in Hong Kong, but the Chinese government has barred me from getting the next flight to Sanya for Miss World. #AfraidOfABeautyQueen— Anastasia Lin (@AnastasiaLinTO)
November 26, 2015
China routinely denies visas to entertainers, academics and journalists it deems to have expressed unfair or politically unpalatable opinions in the past.
Earlier this year, authorities abruptly cancelled Bon Jovi concerts in the mainland after it emerged they had previously expressed solidarity with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
"This is not conduct befitting an aspiring superpower—especially one that hopes to host international competitions such as Miss World and the upcoming Winter Olympics [in 2022]," Ms Lin said in a Facebook post.
Miss World pageant organisers said in a statement that they had no information as to why a visa was not granted to Ms Lin, but said she may be offered a place in the 2016 edition of the contest.
