Anastasia Lin, a 25-year-old actress crowned Miss World Canada in May, said China was blocking her from travelling to the seaside resort city of Sanya for the contest to be held on December 19 because of her human rights activism.
"They're sending this message to every Chinese or every brave person who dare to speak their minds... They want to show people that this is what you get when you speak up," Lin told AFP late today.
Herself a practitioner of Falun Gong -- which emerged in the 1990s combining Taoist philosophy, meditation and qigong exercises -- Lin testified in July at a US congressional hearing on religious persecution in China.
She told US lawmakers she "wanted to speak for those in China that are beaten, burned and electrocuted for holding to their beliefs -- people in prison who eat rotten food with blistered fingers because they dare have convictions."
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"I graduated from university this June, I'm 25 years old, I work as an actress, I do not pose a threat of any kind," she said.
"I'm representing my own country in this competition... If they're discriminating a country's representative without giving a reasonable answer then how is China fit to host this kind of international competition?"
Chinese authorities had declared Lin a "persona non grata", Canadian paper The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday.
"I'm not here to provoke anything. I'm really just here because I sincerely want to take part in the pageant.