After a Russian court rejected Brittney Griner's appeal of her nine-year sentence for drug possession last month, her legal team stated, “Brittney was transferred from the detention center in Iksha on the 4th November. She is now on her way to a penal colony. We do not have any information on her exact current location or her final destination."
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “Every minute that Brittney Griner must endure wrongful detention in Russia is a minute too long. As the Administration continues to work tirelessly to secure her release, the President has directed the Administration to prevail on her Russian captors to improve her treatment and the conditions she may be forced to endure in a penal colony. As we have said before, the U.S. Government made a significant offer to the Russians to resolve the current unacceptable and wrongful detentions of American citizens. ”
Griner, an eight-time all-star center with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was convicted Aug. 4 after police said they found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
Griner admitted that she had the canisters in her luggage, but testified that she had inadvertently packed them in haste and that she had no criminal intent. Her defense team presented written statements that she had been prescribed cannabis to treat pain.
Russia has more than 600 corrective colonies spread throughout the country, according to World Prison Brief, a database offering information on prisons around the world.
Penal colonies in Russia are forced labor camps with dorm-style barracks, often associated with brutality and harsh conditions, the New York Times reports. Russia's history with labor camps dates back to the Stalin era, when the infamous gulags were typical forms of punishment.
A 2021 human rights report by the U.S. Department of State revealed the Russian facilities' issues range from food shortages to overcrowding and lack of hygiene. Abuses and torture were also flagged in the report.
"Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: extrajudicial killings and attempted extrajudicial killings, including of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons in Chechnya by local government authorities," the report revealed.
Most of the penal colonies are isolated from the cities, many of them sprinkled around Siberia like the gulags.
Some inmates work 16-hour days and others are forced to watch propaganda on repeat, the New York Times reported. In 2021, high-profile prisoner and Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny said in an interview that inmates had five daily sessions of screen time where they watched propaganda films and Russian television.
“You need to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everybody marches in a line and where video cameras are hung everywhere,” he said to the Times in 2021. “There is constant control and a culture of snitching."
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