What awaits Griner in Russian prison? Pussy Riot knows
STORY: Pussy Riot, the Russian musicians and feminist protest group, is a famous name in that country.
And now, as the American basketball star Brittney Griner faces a nine-year drug sentence in a Russian penal colony, one of Pussy Riot's members tells Reuters that this is a world she knows all too well.
Because she served in one herself for almost two years, for her part in a punk protest against President Vladimir Putin.
Maria Alyokhina is now on world tour after fleeing Russia. She says the first thing to know about a Russian penal colony, is that this is no ordinary prison.
“This is not a building with cells. This looks like a strange village, like a Gulag labor camp. It actually is a labor 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. Prisoners have usually four-five euros per month and they work six days a week, eight or twelve hours per day. All of that without normal food, without normal medicine system and without any human rights defense.”
“Do not leave someone alone with this system, because as I said before it’s totally inhuman, it’s a Gulag and when you feel yourself alone there it’s much easier to give up.”
“I've never seen anyone who doesn’t speak Russian inside this system, I have no idea how she will be, what she will feel, but it’s quite a tough experience and she shouldn’t go through it alone.”
While on tour with her band, Alyokhina has recounted long spells in solitary confinement or punishment for minor infractions like an unbuttoned coat.
But she also said that receiving letters and good will cards from the outside world helped keep her spirits up, and encouraged supporters of Griner to do the same for her. She says that if it's sent in both English and Russian translation, even if it's just a computer translation, that it will get past prison censors easier.
Russia's prison service did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment on this story.
