Practitioners of the religion or spiritual practice of Falun Gong are among the groups that the Chinese Communist Party regards as particular threats to its power and therefore continuously targets, harasses, and imprisons.
You don’t have to do anything else. Just being associated with Falun Gong is enough for the Chinese government to come after you. And it is also enough for the Russian government to come after you “as Russia increasingly leans toward communist China,” reports Epoch Times (“Russia Detains Falun Gong Practitioner for 2 Months in Jail,” May 4, 2024).
Natalya Minenkova, 46, will be detained until June 27 under a controversial law against “carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization,” the Tushinsky District Court of Moscow ruled. The list of “undesirable organizations” includes independent media outlets, journalism groups, and American think tanks, among others….
The hearing came after police raided the homes of five practitioners of the meditation discipline, which has been facing brutal persecution in China since 1999. Ms. Minenkova was one of four people detained. One man was released. Police questioned Ms. Minenkova and two others, but held Ms. Minenkova overnight until the court appearance on May 4.
“By ordering the detention of Ms. Minenkova, Russia joins communist China as the only other country where a judge has incarcerated a citizen simply for meditating and aspiring to live by Falun Gong’s teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance,” Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, told The Epoch Times. “This shameful act further erodes freedoms in Russia, and demonstrates Russia’s growing, and disconcerting, ties to China’s communist regime.”
Providing music, guiding meditation, hosting readings of spiritual texts—these are the sorts of nefarious activities of which Minenkova is accused. But the Russian dictatorship will do what it must to show that it is on the same wavelength as the Chinese dictatorship, apparently.
