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.
“The United States condemns the Russian government’s actions targeting and repressing members of religious minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“We urge Russia to respect the right of all to exercise the freedom of religion or belief. All religious minorities should be able to enjoy freedom of religion and assembly without interference.”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said that “Putin and Xi Jinping have entered into a marriage of convenience.”
“Russia is doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party, as evidenced by the repression directed at a peaceful Falun Gong practitioner,” Smith said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
‘Completely Baseless Crackdown’
In late June, Russian citizen Zhu Yun was also sentenced to three years in prison under the same law, and in November 2024, Oksana Shchetkina 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.
Asif Mahmood, vice chair of the federal panel United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the sentencing of Minenkova and other Falun Gong practitioners is “yet another example of its expansive, completely baseless crackdown on individuals who ostensibly don’t align with Russia’s domestic or foreign policy objectives.”
He said the United States should redesignate Russia “as a country of particular concern and use its powerful voice to highlight the repression of religious groups in Russia, including Falun Gong practitioners.”
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.
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.“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 cities 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.
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 work 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.”
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 a tool 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.”
