WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner reacts as she hears the decision of her sentencing in Moscow on Aug. 4, 2022.
AP
Make no mistake: Vladimir Putin selected Brittney Griner for particular persecution exactly to use our tradition wars. No American needs to be fooled into considering she doesn’t deserve our full help.
Considered one of his kangaroo courts simply sentenced the WNBA star and Olympics champion to over 9 years in jail for hashish possession and drug smuggling, plus a high quality of about $16,000. But the case was an outrage from the beginning.
Griner flew again to Moscow to play for a Russian professional ladies’s hoops crew. Plainly singled out for additional scrutiny, she obtained arrested for “smuggling” all of 0.7 grams of hashish oil in vape cartridges. How does that benefit the authorized most sentence?
No: The Russians singled out this American as a result of she’s well-known, black, lesbian and workout routines her free speech rights to talk out in opposition to police brutality, and so forth. — and as Putin likes to play the normal conservative to enchantment to Russians and plenty of within the West, that made her a terrific hostage as he jousts with the West in help of his savage battle of conquest in Ukraine.
(For the document, Griner’s dissent is a lot patriotic: In 2020 she informed the Washington Publish: “I don’t imply that in any disrespect to our nation. My dad was in Vietnam and a legislation officer for 30 years.” And: “I needed to be a cop earlier than basketball. I do have delight for my nation.”)
Sure, we’re doubtful about President Joe Biden’s bid to get Griner and one other US hostage freed in alternate for releasing arms trafficker Viktor “Service provider of Loss of life” Bout, however that’s a facet concern.
If you happen to low cost our nation’s responsibility to face by this US citizen unjustly imprisoned by a overseas thug merely since you disagree together with her, you’re taking part in into Putin’s fingers.
Putin’s propaganda, at dwelling and overseas, facilities on portray America as decadent and by some means simply as oppressive as his regime. Standing agency in opposition to his persecution of Brittney Griner, irrespective of how a lot you disagree together with her, is vital to exhibiting the world that our nation stands at the beginning for freedom.
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