Anastasia Lin, former beauty pageant competitor and human rights advocate in China, was part of 2017’s College Freedom Forum at UFM, where she talks about her inspiring journey, going from a beauty queen declared persona non-grata in China to a committed fighter against human organ trafficking.
She was born in Hunan, China. From a very young age she was a leader at school, where she used to indoctrinate her classmates with communist ideas. When she moved to Canada at age 13, she realized the truth of persecution, religious minorities and the hatred propaganda.
“I realized that I’ve been lied to all my life.”
As an actress she participated in films depicting human rights abuses in China. Anastasia also testified in legislators around the world and raised awareness about these abuses through the beauty pageant platform.
Her father was captured by the Chinese security force in 2015 after she won Miss World Canada, in an attempt to silence her and maker her abandon her interest in human rights concerns.
“Silence, helps no one, silence only feeds terror. So I continue speaking up.”
Anastasia wanted to shed light on a horrific situation: organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. According to her, a lot of people, principally Falun Gong practitioners have been killed so their organs can be sold for profit.
The key ingredient for a dictatorship to justify killing is to dehumanize the targeted group; Anastasia says that’s exactly what the government did with Falun Gong practitioners, because their considered this ancient meditation practice goes against their values and beliefs.
Finally she emphasizes that despite their efforts of governments to ban massive media, books, films, they can never censor the human spirit, the imagination and hope in people.
