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Nataliya Minenkova, a cashier at a dental clinic and a follower of the Falun Gong practice, has been sentenced to four years in a penal colony. This was reported by RusNews.
The prosecution requested four and a half years. Minenkova will serve her sentence in a general regime colony. She is also banned from administering websites for seven years.
The 47-year-old Minenkova was charged under the article on organising the activities of an “undesirable organisation” (part 3 of Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code). Since her detention in May 2024, she has been held in a pre-trial detention centre. According to the court, Minenkova organised the activities of the “Centre for Spiritual and Physical Perfection 'Falun Dafa'” Association in Moscow—however, there is no organisation with exactly this name on the list of “undesirable” entities.
The investigation claims Minenkova rented premises, recruited new followers, distributed religious literature, and “used various methods of secrecy to communicate with Centre members.”
As the Moscow resident said during the trial, at first she was accused of connections with seven “undesirable” organisations, but in the final accusation only two foreign organisations remained—one of which ceased to exist in 2017. Her lawyer stressed that investigators have no evidence linking Minenkova to any banned organisations.
In her final statement, Minenkova spoke about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, including the forced removal of their internal organs. She noted: “It is very painful to see that my country, instead of exposing torture, is acting as a tool in the hands of the CPC [Communist Party of China—ed. OVD-Info] and persecutes its own citizens.” She continued: “There is a principle in the universe: everything will be repaid. Prison is not the worst thing. Losing oneself by fearing to speak out according to one’s conscience is much worse. These days, every person faces a choice. And this choice will directly determine their future. The FSB officer who detained me is now also in a pre-trial detention centre,” she concluded.
- Falun Gong is a spiritual and physical self-improvement system developed by Li Hongzhi in the early 1990s in China. Followers of Falun Gong practise meditation with exercises to improve physical health, as well as to achieve moral and spiritual purity. Supporters of the system face persecution due to their criticism of the Chinese authorities.
- In 2020, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office declared seven Falun Gong-affiliated organisations “undesirable” at once.