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 over the weekend. Anastasia Lin (林耶凡) 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.
UK-based Miss World allowed her to compete again this year in the US.
Some US media organizations say Miss World, which has Chinese corporate sponsorship, had prevented them from speaking to Lin.
However, she was allowed to speak to The Associated Press in an interview on 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 US 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.
Chinese embassy spokeswoman Fang Hong (方虹) said the allegations of the Chinese government harvesting organs are “sheer fabrications of the Falun Gong cult.”
The Chinese government outlawed Falun Gong in 1999, saying the movement had attracted 70 million followers and was a threat to social stability.
As of last year, 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 on 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.
Those allegations could not be independently confirmed by AP.
Beyond the promotional video on her social media feed, Lin said she would only have a fleeting chance to speak out at the Miss World ceremonies, and that was only if she makes the top 10, but she was determined to stay the course.
“I’m going to stick here to the end because I know that this Miss World final [broadcast last night] 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.”
The first Donald Trump term was a boon for Taiwan. The administration regularized the arms sales process and enhanced bilateral ties. Taipei will not be so fortunate the second time around. Given recent events, Taiwan must proceed with the assumption that it cannot count on the United States to defend it — diplomatically or militarily — during the next four years. Early indications suggested otherwise. The nomination of Marco Rubio as US Secretary of State and the appointment of Mike Waltz as the national security advisor, both of whom have expressed full-throated support for Taiwan in the past, raised hopes that
Whether in terms of market commonality or resource similarity, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co is the biggest competitor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). The two companies have agreed to set up factories in the US and are also recipients of subsidies from the US CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law by former US president Joe Biden. However, changes in the market competitiveness of the two companies clearly reveal the context behind TSMC’s investments in the US. As US semiconductor giant Intel Corp has faced continuous delays developing its advanced processes, the world’s two major wafer foundries, TSMC and
Authorities last week revoked the residency permit of a Chinese social media influencer surnamed Liu (劉), better known by her online channel name Yaya in Taiwan (亞亞在台灣), who has more than 440,000 followers online and is living in Taiwan with a marriage-based residency permit, for her “reunification by force” comments. She was asked to leave the country in 10 days. The National Immigration Agency (NIA) on Tuesday last week announced the decision, citing the influencer’s several controversial public comments, including saying that “China does not need any other reason to reunify Taiwan with force” and “why is it [China] hesitant
We are witnessing a sea change in the government’s approach to China, from one of reasonable, low-key reluctance at rocking the boat to a collapse of pretense over and patience in Beijing’s willful intransigence. Finally, we are seeing a more common sense approach in the face of active shows of hostility from a foreign power. According to Article 2 of the 2020 Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法), a “foreign hostile force” is defined as “countries, political entities or groups that are at war with or are engaged in a military standoff with the Republic of China [ROC]. The same stipulation applies to
RSS