Activist Canadian model denied entry to China for Miss World pageant

Canada’s Miss World contender says she was barred from entering China to take part in the beauty pageant. Anastasia Lin, an outspoken critic of China’s religious policy, said she was stopped from boarding her connecting flight from Hong Kong after a Chinese official told her by phone she would not be granted a visa on arrival in the resort of Sanya. She claims she was barred because of her views on human rights in China, where she lived until the age of 13. She said: “My denial was unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. They are trying to punish me for my beliefs and prevent me from speaking out about about human rights issues.”

If they start to censor beauty pageants - how pathetic is that

Anastasia Lin

Lin, 25, is a follower of the Falun Gong meditation group, which was called a cult and outlawed by China’s ruling Communist Party in 1999. The model said after she won the Canadian beauty title, Chinese security agents visited her father - who still lives in China - in an apparent attempt to intimidate her into silence. Yundong Yang, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Ottawa, said: “China does not allow any persona non grata to come to China. I simply do not understand why some people pay special attention to this matter and have raised it repeatedly.” Meanwhile, three Chinese rights activists were sentenced to jail by a court on Friday in Guangzhou in southern China after being found guilty of "gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place”. Amnesty International has called for their immediate release.

It’s a dark day when people advocating for press freedom and democracy are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and sentenced to lengthy prison terms after sham trials

Amnesty’s Roseann Rife

Entertainment miss world canada