What are the conditions of detention in correctional colonies in Russia? Here’s What Britney Griner Can Expect



CNN

USA women’s basketball star Britney Griner translated into Russian penal colonywhere conditions are often harsh and a matter of concern to international observers.

The infamous Russian penal colonies are not like ordinary Western prisons. Here’s what you need to know.

Griner’s lawyers said they did not immediately know exactly where her final destination would be. This is not unusual: the process of bringing a person to a maximum security colony in Russia takes place in an atmosphere of secrecy, with relatives and lawyers often not knowing where the prisoner is being sent for several days. Amnesty International.

Last month, Griner lost appeal against a nine-year sentence for drugs. In February, she was detained, and in August she was convicted for the deliberate importation of drugs into Russia.

Griner appears in court via video link last month.

She repeatedly apologized for smuggling a small amount of marijuana into the country where she played basketball during the off-season.

“Our primary concern continues to be BG’s health and wellbeing,” her agent Lindsay Colas said. “As we go through this very difficult phase where we don’t know exactly where BJ is or how she’s doing, we ask for the public’s support to continue writing letters and expressing their love and care for her.”

Griner’s detention raised fears that she was being used as a political pawn. War of Russia against Ukraine.

The vast majority of Russian prisons are actually penal colonies, where prisoners are housed in barracks rather than cells and are often forced to work. report Polish Think Tank Center for Oriental Studies (OSW).

According to the organization, as of 2019, there were more than 800 such facilities in Russia.

Most were built during Soviet times, and think tanks and human rights organizations compare them to Soviet-era gulags — brutal prisoner-of-war camps that expanded across the region during the reign of Joseph Stalin in the mid-20th century.

Russia holds almost half a million prisoners in all its penitentiaries, one of the highest rates in Europe, according to world prison – although in recent years their numbers have declined, unlike in most parts of the world.

The level of supervision and restrictions placed on prisoners today depends on what kind of institution they are sentenced to, and not all require labor.

But a number of high-profile dissidents, activists and foreign nationals sent to maximum security colonies have described the heartbreaking and ordeal.

An aerial view of the penal colony where imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is serving his sentence.

According to an Amnesty International report, prisoners are often transported long distances around the country, and trips to prisons are dangerous and can last up to one month.

These trips often take place in cramped train carriages, the watchdog said. According to OSW, prisoners often end up in institutions with poor and outdated infrastructure and overcrowding.

“Despite several attempts to reform the penitentiary system in Russia, they still resemble the Soviet Gulag: human rights violations and torture are commonplace,” OSW said.

One of the former prisoners, Konstantin Kotov, served, according to him, two meager terms – the first for four months, the second for six months – in colony-settlement No. 1. 2 near Moscow for violating Russian anti-rally legislation.

He was last released in December 2020, and told CNN last year about the experience for prisoners.

“From the first minutes of being here, you experience psychological and moral pressure,” he told CNN.

“You are forced to do things that you would never do in normal life. You are not allowed to talk to other convicts. They force you to find out a list of employee names. You are on your feet all day, from 6 am to 10 pm. You cannot sit down. They don’t let you read, they don’t let you write a letter. It can last two weeks, it can last three weeks.”

Kotov explained that the prisoners slept in the barracks on iron bunks. According to him, between 50 and 60 people slept in his room, each with a small living area.

“You get up at 6 in the morning, go out into the courtyard nearby and listen to the Russian anthem – every day the anthem of the Russian Federation,” he said.

“You can’t write, you can’t read. For example, I watched TV almost all day, Russian federal channels. It’s torture on TV.”

Griner is not the first known figure to be sent to a maximum security prison. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was able to share his first impressions after arriving at the facility last year in a post on his official Instagram account.

“I had no idea that a real concentration camp could be set up 100 kilometers from Moscow,” Navalny said, adding that his head was shaved.

“There are video cameras everywhere, everyone is being monitored and a protocol is drawn up at the slightest violation. I think someone upstairs is reading Orwell’s 1984,” Navalny continued, referring to the classic dystopian novel.

An Orthodox church on the territory of Correctional Colony No. 2 in Russia.

Members of the activist art group Pussy Riot were also sentenced to maximum security. “This is not a building with cameras. It looks like a strange village, like a Gulag labor camp,” camp participant Maria Alyokhina told Reuters last week.

“This is actually a labor camp, because by law all prisoners must work. It is very cynical about this work that prisoners usually sew police uniforms and uniforms for the Russian army, almost without salary.

The colony was divided into a factory zone, where the prisoners made clothes and gloves, and a “living zone”, where, according to Alekhin, 80 women lived in one room with three toilets and no hot water.

Another participant, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, continued hunger strike in 2013 in protest against the return to Correctional colony No. 1. 14 in the Mordovian region.