YAROVAYA LAW AGAINST FALUN GONG
Courts fine "Orthodox believers" for Qigong gymnastics
by Roman Lunkin
Religiia i Pravo, 17 April 2018
The "Falun Dafa" movement exists in various countries of the world, including Russia. It is based on the "Falun Gong" method of Li Hongzhi and it combines the use of "qigong" gymnastics and a spiritual worldview based on the principle of "Truth, Kindness, Patience." The followers themselves consider their doctrine as close to Daoism, but researchers find in it elements of Buddhism and Confucianism. In Russia this movement has been registered as the public organization "Falun Dafa Center of Spiritual and Physical Self-improvement." Divisions exist in eight cities of Russia. However it turned out that even a public organization can be held accountable under the Yarovaya Law for illegal missionary activity.
On 29 March 2018, a magistrate judge of the Mezhdurechensk city judicial district of Kemerovo oblast ordered to fine a follower of Falun Gong and director of the "Health" club, Liubov Koltyrina, 5,000 rubles on the basis of article 5.26, part 4, of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law of the RF (Case No. 5-88/18-5). She was accused of conducting an exhibit "Petals of Peace," distributing books and leaflets of Falung Gong in Mezhdurechensk and in the village of Kameshek, as well as on the Internet, which had been established by personnel of the UFSB for Kemerovo oblast as the result of operational search events "tracking inquiries."
Law enforcement agencies and then also a judge decided that a group of admirers of Falun Gong were required to give notice about their existence in the capacity of a religious group, although they do not consider themselves to be a religious association. While on this matter no kind of expert analysis was conducted. The court simply pointed out that the book "Falun Gong" mentions Buddhism and the follower herself spoke about Daoism as the basis of the teaching. This was sufficient for the court. The ruling also mentions a "witness" who communicated with Koltyrina and received from her a book about spiritual practices of Falun Gong, and then he began giving evidence about "illegal missionary activity."
There is also an interesting detail in the case. Liubov Koltyrina sent letters to one of the candidates for deputy of the Russian State Duma in Kuzbass in which she urged introducing into federal law the sacred texts of Falun Dafa so that they also will not be able to be ruled to be extremist (along with the Bible, Quran, Tannakh, and Kangyur).
The Kemerovo case against Falun Gong on the basis of the Yarovaya Law is now the second. On 1 November 2017, a magistrate judge of the Yalta judicial district of the republic of Crimea also ruled to fine a follower of Falun Gong, Olga Sabatova, 5,000 rubles on the basis of part 4 of article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law of the RF (Case No. 5-94-381/2017).
The "involvement" of people in the membership of the Falun Gong movement within the context of the Yalta case occurred in the Chekhov Seaside Park. There people were doing "qigong" gymnastics and then they read excerpts from a book by Li Hongzhi, which stressed that "we are not a religion." The gymnastic exercises were conducted in complete compliance with the federal law "On physical culture and sport in the RF."
Moreover, it is remarkable that Olga Sabitova declared that she is Orthodox. This means that an Orthodox believer was convicted for illegal missionary activity and dissemination of another teaching, a non-Orthodox one. It is not know whether Sabitova attends an Orthodox church and whether she has a spiritual confessor, but many adherents of eastern spiritual practices and teachings (Living Ethic, theosophy, etc.) think quite sincerely that they remain Orthodox.
And again there is a "witness" in the case who came to Seaside Park and accepted a Falung Gong leaflet, sat on a bench, and then suddenly the exercises and reading of Li Hongzhi's book were interrupted by the police.
The religious nature of Falun Gong in Yalta was proven more basically. An assistant prosecutor of Yalta, E.R. Antonenko, cited both religious studies scholars and sect studies scholars, noting that Falun Gong is among the "destructive religious associations (sects)."
For confirmation of the religious substance of Falun Gong teaching the court was presented information of a docent of the department of philosophy of the Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, O.K. Shevchenko, to the effect that the complex of qigong exercises is not secular but has "a religious format of a syncretistic type" and "indicators of totalitarian sectarianism."
Falun Gong is an organization which is under special monitoring of law enforcement agencies. This movement has both a religious component and a political one, inasmuch as it periodically issues criticism of Chinese authorities because they persecute this group in China. Back in 2008 in Russia the book "Zhuan Falun," written by Li Hongzhi, was included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials of the Russian Ministry of Justice (on the basis of a decision of the Pervomaysk district court of Krasnodar territory). The movement appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging this decision. In 2018, the E.C.H.R. communicated the appeal of Falun Gong and sent an inquiry to the Ministry of Justice with a request to explain the situation regarding the ban of religious literature.
However there is no doubt that the senseless attempt to show continually that the government controls the religious situation will lead to new cases. At the present time the government has many different levers in order to restrict the activity of various groups of citizens without destroying them completely. In the case of Falun Gong and many other movements and missions, as a rule the courts do not want to hear believers' arguments. There appear in cases specially designated "witnesses" and in the regions there has appeared a whole category of people who succumb to "illegal evangelism" and then write a complaint. After receiving religious literature and listening to words about "truth, kindness, and patience," they go to the police with a "pure conscience." (tr. by PDS, posted 17 April 2018)
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