Griner’s family and lawyers, as well as human rights groups, are concerned about what she could face in the Russian prison system, which is notorious for harsh conditions and prisoner abuse. Griner’s supporters fear for her safety as a Black, openly lesbian woman in a country where both racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ community have long faced systemic persecution. Former member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot Maria Alyokhina spent almost two years in a Russian penal colony. “I’ve never seen anyone who doesn’t speak Russian in this system,” he said after learning of Griner’s transfer. “I have no idea what she’s going to be like, what she’s going to feel, but it’s a pretty difficult experience and she shouldn’t be going through it alone.”
What is a penal colony?
A Russian penal colony is essentially a labor camp where prisoners are held in barracks rather than individual cells. Inmates are forced to work every day, often with textiles. Colonies are divided into four security categories and inmates are assigned to colonies based on the severity of the crimes they have committed. Griner has been ordered to serve time in a low-security colony. Griner’s Russian lawyers said this week that they did not know where she was as she was being transferred. This is the pattern for the lengthy process of transferring people from pre-trial detention centers, where they stay while their cases proceed through the courts, to a prison or prison camp where they serve their sentence if convicted. The penal colonies are a relic of Russia’s past: they were inherited from the former Soviet Union as a vast network of gulags. There is a large concentration of the colonies in the remote far north and east of the country, as they were deliberately located to punish convicts with both imprisonment and pseudo-exile on the fringes of civilization. According to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), which oversees about 700 colonies across Russia, there are nearly half a million people held in these facilities this year.
Getting there
The transfer process can take weeks. It involves moving a convict by bus and train and housing him in various detention centers along the way, sometimes traveling hundreds and hundreds of miles from the original detention center. During the process, known in Russia as “etap”, detainees are particularly vulnerable as authorities do not inform their families or legal representatives in advance of their final destination and there is almost no contact with the outside world as they filter the system.
“One of the worst in Europe”
The prison service has been the subject of multiple investigations by international and Russian human rights groups and independent media. These investigations have revealed harsh conditions and abuses. A 2017 Amnesty International report described conditions in most penal colonies and prisons as “among the worst in Europe” and recommended that Russian authorities make legal adjustments to ensure that legal representatives were informed of plans to move prisoners and ensure that “the conditions during the transport of prisoners do not amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, including sanitary conditions such as access to clean water, toilet facilities and ventilation”. Other groups have noted that most FSIN facilities are outdated and require serious renovation to meet human standards of living, highlighting problems of overcrowding and difficulty maintaining basic sanitation, often leading to disease outbreaks. The outbreaks then highlight another pressing concern – the lack of adequate medical care available to prisoners. Trevor Reed, an American who spent more than two years in a Russian prison before being released earlier this year in a prisoner exchange, complained that he had been exposed to another prisoner with active tuberculosis. Reid’s family said they believed he had contracted the disease and that, despite coughing up blood, he did not seek medical attention. Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader who returned to Russia in early 2021 despite a poisoning attempt on his life, also complained of deteriorating health and poor medical care as he suffered from severe back pain and numbness in his leg. In notes regularly shared by his lawyers on social media after visiting the prison, Navalny has described the psychological pressure put on him by guards. “I must admit that the Russian prison system managed to surprise me. I did not imagine that it was possible to organize a real concentration camp 100 km from Moscow,” said Navalny’s first post from prison in early 2021. “Video cameras are everywhere, watching everyone and reporting the slightest infraction,” he continued. “I think someone higher up read Orwell’s 1984 and said, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, let’s do this education through dehumanization.’” Navalny has been repeatedly sent to punitive confinement recently for infractions such as unbuttoning his uniform or not keeping his hands behind his back. “We have received deeply disturbing information about the increasingly harsh treatment of Alexei Navalny in the strict penal colony where he is currently held,” Amnesty International said in a September statement. “This includes severe punishments for alleged offenses and repeated attempts to ostracize him from other prisoners who are allegedly not allowed to speak to him or even look at him.” “Russian prison authorities are using the harsh methods they have been refining for years to try to break the spirit of Alexei Navalny by making his existence in the penal colony unbearable, humiliating and dehumanizing,” Amnesty said.
Cannon fodder
Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the financier of the Wagner mercenary group, which President Vladimir Putin has relied heavily on in various conflicts, has been seen on video visiting penal colonies and urging inmates to sign up as volunteers, focusing on those who sentences for violent crimes. . Those desperate enough to choose combat over penal colonies are often sent to war zones with little to no training and poorly equipped. “The level of education these people have is extremely low, they are exhausted, because the prison is not a resort and the discipline is in a very, very deplorable state,” Olga Romanova, human rights activist and director of Russia Behind Bars. group, which helps convicts, said in a recent interview with Current Time TV. “They are sent by Putin to be used and discarded. By doing this, he solves two problems: he clears the minefields of Ukraine with their bodies and reduces the social and economic burden on the Russian budget,” he added.
