Note: On March 30th, 2016, the No.33-11287-2016 civil action verdict, released on the website of the City Court of Moscow, Russia, ruled to affirm an original judgment made on Dec. 19th, 2015. It ruled against the Dual Cultivation Center, a local NGO of Falun Gong in Moscow.

On June 11th, 2015, the Center launched a lawsuit against REN-TV for an article published on its website, which was entitled Cult Head Arrested in Izhevsk. The Dual Cultivation Center claimed that the report contained false information, such as “the cult leader propagated thatFalun Gong practitioners are super-natural, and Falun Gong can cure all diseases.”“Falun Gong followers hide banned extremist propaganda material,”“cult leaders do not pay attention to practice and focus on recruiting more followers, many of whom then commit suicide or suffer from psychiatric disorders”, “In 1999, Falun Gong made frequently caused trouble and  instructed followers to practice it instead of seeing doctors when they became ill, resulting in deaths or psychiatric disorders, and the cult even threatened the national constitutional system, and was thus banned.” The cult claimed that such information, including “the leader of the Izhevsk cult facing penalty” damaged the reputation and dignity of the center, thus they sued for compensation for their spiritual loss.

After the trial, the court ruled that the plaintiff lacked evidence and its appeal was unreasonable. Thus, it was defeated in the lawsuit. The Center was not satisfied with the verdict and appealed, but failed again.

Link to the verdict

http://mos-gorsud.ru/files/docs/GAI/33-11287_2016_-_Opredelenie_suda_apellyacionnoi_instancii__(30.03.2016).doc