#Brittney Griner is being held by Russia simply because she is an American

[beardedmrbean]

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 handed down Tuesday in Moscow, 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.

The report notes that “physical and sexual abuse by prison guards was systemic,” that torture of prisoners was pervasive — at times resulting in death or suicide — and that discriminatory protections against women and people of color were not often enforced. The law also does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“Russian prisons are grim, even relative to prisons in other countries. And the Putin regime has ramped up hostility towards gays and lesbians as part of its broader policy of hard-line nationalism,” said Muriel Atkin, a Russian history professor at George Washington University.

That adds further concerns to a fraught situation. While tensions between the White House and the Kremlin continue to boil over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Colas, emphasized Tuesday that she believes Moscow is using Griner’s imprisonment as leverage against the U.S.

“Brittney Griner’s nine-plus year sentence is regarded as harsh and extreme by Russian legal standards,” Colas said in a statement Tuesday on Twitter. “Today’s disappointing, yet unsurprising, appeal outcome further validates the fact that she is being held hostage and is being used as a political pawn. Brittney Griner is being held by Russia simply because she is an American.”

The type of penal colony Griner — who was arrested for carrying two cartridges of cannabis oil — will be sent to is most likely a repurposed Soviet gulag, a brutal system of labor camps and prisons that incarcerated millions of people from the 1920s to the 1950s. Prisoners were used for farming, mining or logging in sparsely populated areas of the country or worked in sweatshop conditions. 

Typically such compounds are found in the far northern and eastern reaches of Russia as part of a unique system that aims to both imprison and exile convicts, according to an Amnesty International report published last year. It can often take weeks for prisoners to arrive at the prisons on prison trucks and specially designed train carriages called Stolypins.

Prisoners are extremely vulnerable and can be difficult to locate during the arduous journeys, Amnesty International noted. That has gained notice with the imprisonment of high-profile figures, such as oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, among others.

[kiefbowl]

Do you know anything about the Brittney Griner situation? I don't know, I feel sorry for her to a degree, but in the end I feel forced to conclude that she just really fucked up and is simply expecting her status as a famous woman to get her out of it. Like...they were crying false arrest for a long time but now she says now that she did bring vape cartridges "accidentally" because she "packed in a hurry". What kind of excuse is that? She should know that's not something to bring. That kind of huge mistake would not be forgiven for any average person, you would have to face consequences. It's not like she wouldn't have gotten arrested for that at a US airport as a normal person, it's only because she's famous and was probably given a shorter security check that she even managed to get to Russia before they were discovered. I think weed laws are stupid, don't get me wrong. But it's illegal at almost ANY airport, she should KNOW that as somebody who travels regularly. She should also have known that she was going to a country that is extremely strict with weed laws. And it's not like we don't prosecute people for weed here in the US all the time, yeah more states have decriminalized it, but federally it is still a scheduled drug and people are still serving long sentences for possession, some jailed for life. People have died in prison from weed charges, it seems hypocritical of people involved with the federal government to decry her situation while still making no change to federal laws and policies regarding weed. They are prosecuting her in accordance with the laws they impose on their own citizens, it's not like they're prosecuting her any harder. 10 years is quite literally less than the US has given people in the past for similar situations.

I’m gonna be real with you chief could not read this whole ask. if you think an american black lesbian being held by the russian government is gonna do anything good in the world idk what to tell you. she’s literally in danger like…what more is there to consider