The IK-2 penal colony was founded in 1931 for the Soviet Gulag system in the small town of Yavas, about 270 miles southeast of Moscow.
Ivan Melnikov, the Russia representative for the European Committee on Human Rights. Told the News he was shocked that Griner was sent to Moldova by 36 women’s colonies in Russia. “No [inmates] want to be sent there. It’s not a nice place.” None of the former IK-2 convicts was willing to speak to News for an interview. “They are scared,” Natalia Filimonova of the NGO Russia Behind Bars told the News.
In interviews or past statements, former detainees have shared stories of routine staff brutality, lack of medical care, malnutrition, also slavery-like conditions.
“I couldn’t sleep for years because of the trauma of my time there. Ex-convict Tatyana Gavrilova said in an interview with the independent Russian news site Sota.
Vision. “The first time I went there, they stripped me naked and told me to shrink my waist. When he refused, saying he would die first. The camp director ordered him to get dress and hit him on the head.
“Everything went black,” said Gavrilova, sentenced to 16 years at 20 for killing a rapist. “I got away with the handcuffs on the radiator. We have all been beaten.
In the same interview, another ex-convict, Olga Shilyaeva, said. They have their own laws there.” He told the guards acted with complete impunity, also detainees were disenfranchise.
“We had to go round and round in the corridors … also bend under [knee-deep] sticks. If you touch him, you’ve hit him. The director is a maniac, he hits you with a club, boxing gloves, whatever. We had about one kill within a year.”
He went on to describe how, after replying to one of the guards. The principal came in and said, “Kneel down and beg your pardon.” When she refused, he made her slam her hands against the wall while standing – a punishment many carried out. The convict remembered – and began to beat him on the back with a metal rod until he fell to his knees.