Russia Imprisons Falun Gong Practitioner for 4 Years Amid Growing Ties to Beijing

Epoch Times

6 days ago

Natalya Minenkova, who has been calling attention to the abuses in China, said she's pained to see her country becoming a tool for the CCP in the persecution.
Natalya Minenkova does the Falun Gong meditation in Dendropark in Moscow, Russia, on July 5, 2022.
Natalya Minenkova does the Falun Gong meditation in Dendropark in Moscow, Russia, on July 5, 2022.
A Moscow court has sentenced a woman to four years in prison for practicing Falun Gong as human rights watchers sound alarm over the 'chilling alignment' between Russia and China.
The woman, 47-year-old Natalya Minenkova, was sentenced on July 23 after spending a year in detention under the accusation of 'carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization.'
The prison term was handed down just a day after authorities in Siberia raided the home of a Falun Gong practitioner, seizing her phone and laptop.
Repression against Falun Gong practitioners in Russia has escalated in the past year, with seven other practitioners prosecuted or detained since March 2024.
In late June, Russian citizen Zhu Yun was also sentenced to three years in prison under the same law, and in November 2024, Oksana Shchetkin from southern Russian city Pyatigorsk, received a two-year prison term for her association with Friends of Falun Gong, an organization that the Russian court labeled 'undesirable.'
The controversial law, under which 'carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization,' is deemed a crime, was passed in 2015 and has been used by Russian authorities to target more than 100 organizations, as well as journalists and human rights activists.
Levi Browde, executive director of Falun Dafa Information Center, said the trend of punishing Falun Gong practitioners for meditating is 'dangerous and deeply concerning.'
The fact that Minenkova was sentenced three days after a key Falun Gong anniversary, the 26th year since the persecution began in China, raises serious questions, he said.
'Whether intentional or not, the timing echoes Beijing's playbook and signals a chilling alignment with its authoritarian repression,' Browde told The Epoch Times.
'It is beneath Russia's sovereignty and national dignity to bow to pressure from Beijing to ban Falun Gong and imprison its own citizens. History will not look kindly on those who choose to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party—the most brutal communist regime in the world today.'
Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, in Chicago on March 15, 2024.
Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
A 'Broader Trend of Transnational Repression' A 'troubling pattern' is emerging with the growing Chinese influence and the expanding repression of Falun Gong globally, according to Browde.
Minenkova's arrest in May 2024 occurred two weeks before a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which culminated in the two pledging a 'new era' of partnership. Similar roundups also took place in Serbia and Malaysia over the past year ahead of Xi's trips to the respective countries, which Browde said reflect a 'broader trend of transnational repression tied to Beijing's reach.'
'These incidents raise serious concerns that Moscow and other governments may be suppressing peaceful religious groups to align themselves more closely with Beijing—using repression as a form of diplomatic currency,' he said.
Beyond the temporary detentions seen in Serbia and Malaysia, the situation in Russia seems particularly pressing—Moscow has listed seven Falun Gong related organizations as illegal and has banned several Falun Gong related publications, including the practice's main teaching, 'Zhuan Falun,' as well as a report on the regime-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China.
In 2017, some Russian citiies banned an art exhibition showcasing paintings that depict real-life stories of torture and persecution of Falun Gong in China. A local prosecutor's office cited 'expediency of preserving good international relations' to justify the action.
As Russia now issues 'criminal sentences for meditation,' it appears Moscow is 'taking extreme measures to curry favor with Beijing,' Browde said. Following Conscience Minenkova, a dental equipment supplier's assistant manager, has practiced Falun Gong for more than a decade.
'We tell the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong, and the CCP is afraid of this,' she told the court on July 23. 'And here, in Russia, it is doing its dirty deeds with your hands, with the hands of investigators, prosecutors, FSB officers.'
'No matter how long and carefully the law enforcement agencies search for evidence of the 'crime' for which I am being tried, they will not find it,' Minenkova said. 'Because there is no crime and no guilt. And the law enforcement officers know this.'
She recounted Falun Gong's popularity in China during the 1990s, when around 70 million to 100 million people began practicing for the physical and mental benefits; and how in 1999, the atheist regime declared the practice its enemy upon deeming it a threat to the Party's power, mobilizing a nation's resources to eradicate them.
Minenkova credited the practice for healing her stomach issues, sore throat, and chronic tonsillitis. Her character has also improved because of the practice, she said, and her sister, whom she used to quarrel with constantly, once told her she has 'changed a lot.'
Natalya Minenkova holds a photo of a Falun Gong practitioner persecuted to death in China, at her sentencing at the Tushinsky District Court of Moscow on July 23, 2025.
Courtesy of SOTAvision
She has written letters and attended medical forums and other events calling attention to the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, including the forced organ harvesting in China targeting prisoners of her faith, she said, because she can't remain silent in the face of killing.
'It is very painful to see that my country, instead of protecting me from the persecution of the CCP and assisting in exposing torture, murder and forced organ harvesting in China, is an instrument in the hands of the CCP and persecutes its own citizens,' Minenkova said.
'Prison is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. It is much worse to lose yourself by refusing to act according to your conscience.'