Brittney Griner Is Headed to a Truly Horrific Place – POLITICO
“I quickly realized I didn’t know my country,” she told me.
Now the advocacy group provides a wide range of assistance to people incarcerated in Russia, from offering humanitarian aid during their sentences to training public defenders. Romanova moved to Germany in 2017 after Russian authorities accused her of embezzling funds and raided the non-profit’s offices. Later, a court found her innocent, but she decided to remain in Germany and manage the advocacy group from there. She said she still receives dozens of audio messages from incarcerated people every day.
“I’ve been doing this for 15 years; I have a lot of stories,” Romanova said.
Russian penal colonies, successors of the infamously brutal Gulags that took an estimated 1.6 million lives under the rule of Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, are much harsher than most U.S. prisons. They are usually located far away from cities, isolating prisoners in remote locations. For some families, it’s expensive to travel across the country to visit, and even though most colonies are accessible by bus or car, some require you to walk the last mile through a restricted area.
Intensely long and hard workdays, brutal physical and sexual violence, meager rations and other human rights abuses are prevalent in the system. For women, Romanova says, it’s even worse — “Everyone is up for themselves there. Everything goes — you can betray, you can abuse. There are no rules of behavior.”
I spoke with Romanova on Zoom about what Griner’s experience in a Russian penal colony might look like. She painted a dark picture.
“I don’t think anyone would protect her,” she told me. “Americans won’t believe me, but human rights don’t exist in Russian colonies — no right to health, dignity or life. Nothing, forget it.”
This conversation took place earlier this month, before the news about Griner being transferred to a penal colony broke. It was translated from Russian and edited for brevity and clarity.
Anastasiia Carrier: Let’s get a basic question out of the way: What is the difference between a prison and a penal colony?
Olga Romanova: I think what you want to know is the difference between the detention center and a penal colony.
To be honest, I think it would be easier for Brittney in a colony. A life in a detention center is a life in a cell with 40 to 42 people on bunk beds. Forty women in one room, can you imagine? They have limited walks and limited rights to receive care packages. It’s impossible to survive on the kind of food they feed them there.
Now, Griner is about to transfer to the colonies. We won’t be able to know anything about her at this stage. Every stage of this process is classified, and we won’t be able to track her. We also wouldn’t know how much she is traveling — it could be two days, or it could be two months.
Then she would get to the general security colony — there are only general security colonies for women, while men get both general and high-security colonies. It would be remote from big cities, not pretty and not comfortable. But at least it wouldn’t be a confined space, and she would have access to fresh air.
Colonies put limits on everything — women are wearing uniforms, they are required to work, required to always greet staff. In our work, we think women’s colonies are more dangerous than men’s.
Carrier: That’s interesting, why do you think women’s colonies are more dangerous?
Romanova: You see, in men’s colonies, even with all their cruelty from organized crime, they have unspoken rules of behavior and an unofficial group of power brokers called the blat komitet that controls the behavior. When colony authorities need to keep the peace, they go to the blat komitet and strike a deal. Women’s colonies don’t have that. Everyone is up for themselves there. Everything goes — you can betray, you can abuse. There are no rules of behavior.
In men’s colonies, men often unite in couples in a non-sexual way, so it would be easier to receive care packages and survive. In women’s colonies, there are also these couples, but they are often of a sexual nature and often associated with violence. Domination is common in women’s colonies. Dominating — meaning sexually abusive — women take up leadership roles in women’s colonies. They get supervision roles at the colony’s manufacturing enterprise, and they often collaborate with camp authorities.
Women’s colony authorities, who want to ensure submission, also get creative — tell a woman you won’t give her period pads and she might cooperate and snitch on other women. Everyone knows that anyone among them can be a mole, and everyone prefers to keep to themselves.
Carrier: What kind of stories do you hear from the women’s colonies? Is there a way to predict what Griner’s time in the colonies would look like?
Romanova: There is this one American woman we worked with, Sarah Krivanek. She is in Skopino colony in Ryazan Oblast. We have been helping her for a while now. (Krivanek was released earlier this month and is currently in a holding cell awaiting her deportation hearing on Nov. 11. She was sentenced to one year and three months in a penal colony for a domestic abuse incident in Moscow and she claims the charges were wrongful.) She has issues with receiving medical assistance because she doesn’t have a Russian government-issued medical insurance certificate. And she can’t pay for the services because she can’t receive money transfers from the U.S.
Here is a message from one of my staff members on this: “It’s hard to explain to Americans some things. For one, why do they use coal to heat the barracks when there are more modern ways to do it?” Because there is no other energy source. “Or why do they consider cigarettes to be a currency?” Cigarettes are currency, and a U.S. dollar is not. We would always send our conservatees cigarettes in care packages.
Getting out isn’t easy either. My ex-husband two husbands ago got authorization to pick up Sarah’s credit cards and her passport, which were still in police custody in Moscow. He will meet Sarah at the airport before her flight and return it to her.