Brittney Griner will enter a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment when she is transferred to a penal colony, the successor to the infamous Russian gulag, to fulfill a nine-year sentence, former prisoners and advocates said.
Human rights violations are a regular feature of many of the camps, according to the U.S. State Department, human rights groups and others who have maintained regular contact with prisoners in Russia. That the WNBA star, who lost her appeal Tuesday, is a gay Black woman could add unknown variables to a penal system that is known to be remote and harrowing.
“Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life threatening,” a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said. “Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”
Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was jailed over protests against President Vladimir Putin, described working up to 17-hour days in a sewing shop, sleep deprivation, freezing conditions, a lack of basic hygiene, dangerous and humiliating working conditions, and regular assaults on other prisoners.
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