Yan Jiyu’s column: She is one of the greatest players of the US women’s basketball team, why was she imprisoned by Russia?

Original link: https://sehseh.substack.com/p/872

?The full text is easy to read and share: She is one of the greatest players of the US women’s basketball team. Why was she imprisoned by Russia?

Text / Yan Jiyu

Brittney Griner and his wife Cherelle Griner celebrated a tragic wedding anniversary on June 18 this year.

From a prison in the Russian capital Moscow (Moscow), Granner tried to call his wife, who was waiting 6,000 kilometers away in Phoenix, the United States. It was their 4th wedding anniversary that day. She called 11 times, but the phone was never connected.

Granner, 31 years old and at the peak of his athletic career, is one of the greatest players in American women’s basketball history. She won an NCAA championship, a WNBA championship, two FIBA ​​World Cup championships, two Olympic (Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo) championships, and a seven-time WNBA All-Star team. Since the outbreak of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the relationship between the United States and Russia has deteriorated to the lowest point since the end of the Cold War, and Graner has become a victim of this war.

Her experience has once again confirmed a truth: sports are never just for sports, and politics are never just for politics.

However, the Oolong phone call incident on the 18th cannot be blamed on the Kremlin.

It was Saturday, and the staff at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, who were supposed to transfer the call, apparently didn’t go to work. What Granner might have heard was, “It’s off-duty time, please call back after get off work.” The world’s No. 1 superpower can actually make such an embarrassing and outrageous “logistics business error”, and the US State Department has also admitted its mistake and apologized, and is currently making other arrangements.

winged migratory bird

Granner is the leading center for the WNBA powerhouse Phoenix Mercury, but she, like many U.S. women’s basketball players, is a “migratory bird.”

Every winter and spring, when the WNBA is on hiatus, Glenner will go to the Russian Women’s Professional Basketball Team (WPBL) as a “mercenary”, and even played against the Zhejiang Chouzhou Golden Bulls of the Chinese women’s basketball team. For the past 8 years, she played for the ” UMMC Ekaterinburg” in Russia, earning more than $1 million per season, more than four times her WNBA salary, and helped the Russian team win for seven consecutive years. Back to the WPBL Champions Cup.

At the end of January this year, the last season of the Russian women’s professional basketball team ended. It stands to reason that the “migratory bird” Granner should have flown from freezing Russia back to sunny Phoenix, but she has disappeared.

On March 6, news came that Granner had been arrested by Russian authorities on charges of “drug smuggling”.

On February 17, when Granner was leaving from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, he was found to have “cannabis oil” in the pod of the electronic cigarette in his luggage-in other words, Granner was in Russia was arrested seven days before the use of force against Ukraine and charged with the maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

Granted, Graner may not be guilty or may have done something wrong. However, today’s Russia is by no means a “democratic country ruled by law”.

It is not difficult to understand what happened to its opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We have good reason to question: Granner has become a bargaining chip for Russia, a victim of the rivalry between the two great powers, and can even be described as a “hostage” or a “political prisoner” in another sense.

From players to hostages, from sports fields to power arenas

Washington initially tried to resolve the matter under the table, and the WNBA and Glenner’s relatives and friends also cooperated in a low-key manner, but the “strategic silence” obviously failed.

At the beginning of May, the State Department officially announced that Granner had been “wrongfully detained” by the Russian side, and the case was handed over to Roger D. Carstens, the presidential special envoy for hostage affairs, who was experienced in hostage negotiations and had poor “performance”. Bill Richardson, a secular senior US diplomat, has also joined the ranks of mediation as a civilian, and the rescue operation is expected to intensify.

It is generally believed that Moscow’s move against Granner was intended to “exchange people”.

The United States and the Soviet Union made many deals during the Cold War, the most famous case being the American Air Force U-2 reconnaissance pilot Francis Gary Powers and the Soviet spy Abel (Bridge of Spies) in the movie “Bridge of Spies”. Rudolf Abel). In recent years, despite the sharp deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations, the two sides made a deal : at the end of April this year, retired U.S. Marine Trevor Reed was finally released and returned to China after being imprisoned by Russia for three years.

Americans like Reid and Glenner who were wrongfully detained by Russia, as well as corporate security expert Paul Whelan. He was arrested in December 2018 and later sentenced to 16 years in prison for “espionage” . He is currently being held in the “IK-17” prison, southeast of Moscow, with a long journey back home.

As for this time, who is the object Russia wants to exchange with Graner? Many analysts point to Viktor Bout, a notorious international arms dealer. The man was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a US court in 2012, and his life was also made into the movie “Lord of War”.

Granner, who is black and a lesbian, is detained in a country that is extremely unfriendly to LGBTQ+, and so far has been unable to communicate with relatives and friends. She has been detained and detained for more than 4 months, and her next interrogation will be in early July at the earliest, but no one knows when the trial will begin.

hardest season

The good news is that Granner’s sisters in the WNBA haven’t forgotten her.

Recently, the Russian authorities gave her extra-judicial grace, allowing outsiders to send her an email. The lawyer printed the information and brought it to her when she visited the prison. She wrote a reply letter on the spot, and the lawyer took a photo and sent it back thousands of miles away. U.S.

“We just didn’t want to, she thought we had forgotten her,” New York Liberty center Stefanie Dolson said.

In fact, Granner’s popularity in the WNBA is not particularly good. She is 206 centimeters tall and weighs 93 kilograms. She has a very strong style of play and is constantly pointed at by fans who have misogynistic tendencies. One of her most famous deeds on the court was in August 2019 against the Dallas Wings in her performance of the all-martial arts. She played 5 with 1, without fear or loss, but was later suspended for 3 games by the WNBA. . Her first wife, Glory Johnson, was also a WNBA player, but there were constant conflicts before and after marriage, from the home to the stadium and the court, and it ended in less than a month.

The tough Granner is in desperate need of help right now. She’s certainly not old enough to retire, but a professional athlete’s prime is only a few years old, and prison is by no means a place for athletes to stay in shape. How long will her tall body be trapped in a narrow cell?

On May 6 this year, the 26th season of the WNBA has begun.

Granner’s initials and back number “BG42” were exposed at the home of the 12 American women’s professional basketball teams, and some players directly changed the back number to 42, as if to ride the court in her place and cheer for her.

Perhaps it is a coincidence that the number “42” has a special place in the history of American professional sports: it is the number of Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball (MLB); in 1997, MLB announced the number. The back number is “retired” from the entire league, paying the highest respect to Robinson.

Granner was out of the game, but he was everywhere: floor decals for “BG42”, photos and slogans on fan hat Ts and jerseys, hashtags “#WeAreBG” and “#FreeBG” on social media, Change.org 300,000 petitions…Seattle Storm power forward Breanna Stewart, who takes to Twitter every day to talk about the Glenner incident; dozens of human rights groups call on President Joe Biden to seek a deal with Russia… .

This was definitely the toughest “game” in Glenner’s 31-year life. Although success or failure is uncertain, Rescue Glenner is a fervent movement in its own right, a testament to the dynamism of a democratic society. (Finish)

About the Author｜ Yan Jiyu (Master of the Institute of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University, has long been engaged in interdisciplinary translation and international news reporting and commentary work, and is currently the executive deputy editor-in-chief of “Wind Media”.)

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This article is reprinted from: https://sehseh.substack.com/p/872
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