A resident of Tomsk, a major city in Siberia, has been sentenced to three years for alleged involvement with the Falun Gong movement.

Zhu Yun, a resident of Tomsk, a major city in Siberia, has been sentenced to three years in a general regime penal colony for allegedly organising the activities of an “undesirable organisation” (Part 3, Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code). This was reported to OVD-Info by the Sovetsky District Court of Tomsk.

The man has also been banned from engaging in public and political activities for three years.

The prosecution of Yun became public in October 2024, when he was sent to a remand centre. According to law enforcement, from September 2021 to November 2023, the man “with the aim of promoting the ideas of the Falun Gong movement, rented non-residential premises where he held meetings of supporters.” Investigators also claimed he raised funds to prepare informational materials “to popularise the activities of the aforementioned organisation.”

• Falun Gong is a system of spiritual and physical development created by Li Hongzhi in the early 1990s in China. Practitioners of Falun Gong perform meditation exercises to improve physical health and to achieve moral and spiritual purity. According to the Falun Dafa Information Centre, in China, followers of this movement face widespread persecution, including fatal cases. In Russia, in the summer of 2020, seven organisations connected with Falun Gong were declared “undesirable.”