What Will Brittney Griner Face.

Life is not looking good for Brittney Griner, she is being transferred to a gulag where conditions are grim if not third world like.

Griner faces difficult conditions at Russian penal colony, former prisoners and advocates say
Like the Soviet gulag system they replaced, the prisons "were often harsh and life threatening,” a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said.
NBC News
By Phil McCausland and Curtis Bunn
October 26, 2022


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.”

It will even be worst for her…

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.

She is also being used as a pawn by Putin!

I believe that everything about her case is trumped up because of:

1. Because she is an American.
2. Because she beat the Russian team in the Olympics.
3. Because of the invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. support of Ukraine.
4. Because she is Black.
5. Because she is a Lesbian.

I also believe that Putin is the puppet master who is pulling the string in her case.

Rudra Sil, a Russian historian and political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he is not exactly sure what life will be like for Griner if she is moved to a penal colony. But if form and history hold true, he said, it will undoubtedly be brutal for her as a high-profile gay Black woman. 

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania who focuses on the Black experience in Russia, agreed. She noted that Russia can use much about Griner to make outlandish requests as the Kremlin preys upon America’s racial tensions and culture war issues.

“She’s Black. She’s gay. And this is a marijuana case,” Julian-Varnon told NPR. “What are the three biggest issues in the United States in terms of domestic politics? Marijuana convictions, LGBTQ issues, anti-Black racism — and the carceral system.”

I remember the 1978 movie Midnight Express about the story of Billy Hayes life in a Turkish prison, my guess is that Brittney Griner will be like Hayes’ experience in the Turkish prison and I don’t see a prisoner swap for her… Putin is going to drag this out for as long as possible.