Brittney Griner will be sent to a penal colony that is most likely a repurposed Soviet gulag to fulfill a nine-year sentence after she lost her appeal of a drug possession conviction in Moscow on Tuesday. Human rights violations are a regular feature of many of these camps, according to the U.S. State Department, and former prisoners and advocates say Griner will endure a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment.

That the WNBA star is a gay Black woman could add unknown variables to a system known to be remote and harrowing.