- Title: Brittney Griner faces bleak life in Russian penal colony
- Date: 3rd November 2022
- Summary: NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA (FILE - DECEMBER 20, 2013) (REUTERS) TOP SHOT OF PRISON WHERE PUSSY RIOT MEMBER MARIA ALYOKHINA WAS BEING HELD AT THE TIME VARIOUS OF INMATES IN THE COURTYARD
- Embargoed: 17th November 2022 16:06
- Keywords: GRINER JAIL MARIA ALYOKHINA PUSSY RIOT RUSSIA
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
- City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
- Country: UK
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Europe,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA002661503112022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: VIDEO QUALITY PART AS INCOMING / PROFANITY ON ALYOKHINA'S BADGE DURING INTERVIEW
Tedious manual work, poor hygiene, and lack of access to medical care - such are the conditions awaiting U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner in a Russian penal colony after she lost her appeal last week against a nine-year drug sentence.
It's a world familiar to Maria Alyokhina, a member of the feminist art ensemble Pussy Riot who spent nearly two years as an inmate for her part in a 2012 punk protest in a Moscow cathedral against President Vladimir Putin.
The first thing to understand, Alyokhina said in an interview, is that a penal colony is no ordinary prison.
"This is not a building with cells. This looks like a strange village, like a Gulag labour camp," she said, referring to the vast penal network established by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to isolate and crush inmates.
"It actually is a labour camp because by law all the prisoners should work. The quite cynical thing about this work is that prisoners usually sew police uniforms and uniforms for the Russian army, almost without salary."
The colony was divided between a factory area where the prisoners made garments and gloves and a "living zone" where Alyokhina said 80 women lived in one room with just three toilets and no hot water.
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, could soon be transferred to a colony in the absence of a further appeal or an agreement between Washington and Moscow to swap her for a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States - a possibility that was floated months ago but has yet to materialise.
In a Pussy Riot show that has toured the world and is now playing in Britain, Alyokhina relives the memories of her time as an inmate - snowy prison yards, plank-like beds, long spells in solitary confinement, and punishment for minor infringements such as an unbuttoned coat or poorly attached nametag.
Russia's prison service did not reply to a request for comment for this story.
For a foreigner with little or no Russian, it's harder to navigate the system and deal with the isolation.
Alyokhina said receiving cards and letters from the outside world offered a rare ray of hope, and she urged people to support Griner that way.
She said they should use a machine translation and send the text in both English and Russian to get it more easily past the prison censor.
"Do not leave someone alone with this system," she said. "It's totally inhuman, it's a Gulag, and when you feel yourself alone there, it's much easier to give up."
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