Internment

Defining internment and concentration camp

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."

Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s, the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish:reconcentrados) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). The label was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902). And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period.

During the 20th century, the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state reached its most extreme forms in the Soviet Gulag system of concentration camps (1918–1991) and the Nazi concentration camps (1933–1945). The Soviet system was the first applied by a government on its own citizens. The Gulag consisted in over 30,000 camps for most of its existence (1918–1991) and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953, which is only a third of its 73-year lifespan. The Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time. Moreover, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps, specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing.

As a result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment.

The "concentration camp" label continues to see expanded use for cases post-World War II, for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China's re-education camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps. The camps were established in the late 2010s under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration.

Impact

Scholars have debated the efficacy of internment as a counterinsurgency tactic. A 2023 study found that internment during the Irish war of independence led to greater grievances among Irish rebels and led them to fight longer in the war.

Examples

Main article: List of concentration and internment camps

Active

• North Korean prison camps (1948–present)
• Guantanamo Bay detention camp (2002–present)
• Refugee detention centres in Libya (2011–present)
• Uyghur re-education camps in China (2017–present)
• Anti-gay detention camps in Chechnya (2017–present)
• Migrant internment camps as part of immigration detention in the United States (2018–present) in facilities such as Alligator Alcatraz
• Internment camps in Ethiopia during the Tigray War and the War in Amhara (2020–present).
• Russian filtration camps in Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present)
• Sde Teiman detention camp in Israel during the Gaza war (2024–present)
• Italian migrant detention camps in Albania (2024–present)

Closed

• Abercorn Barracks, Northern Ireland (sometimes referred to as Ballykinlar Barracks) (1919–1921, 1971)
• Reconcentration policy during Cuba's War of Independence from Spain (1896–1898)
• Second Boer War in South Africa (1900–1902)
• Curragh Camp in Ireland (1939–1946, 1957–1959). Curragh Camp was by far the largest, at least 30 other prisons and camps were used throughout the country.
• Cyprus internment camps (1946–1949)
• Reconcentrados "Zones of Protection" 1901, Philippine-American War
• Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907)
• Concentration of Armenians during the Armenian Genocide (1915–1916)
• Internment camps in France and its colonies (1910s-1960s)
• Finnish Civil War (1918)
• Frongoch internment camp British camp used for WWI and Irish 1916 Easter Rising prisoners
• Gormanston Camp in the Irish Free State (1922–1923)
• Malayan New villages as part of the Briggs Plan during the Malayan Emergency (1950–1960)
• Italian concentration camps in Africa and Europe (1930–1944)
• HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland (1971–1975), previously known as Long Kesh Detention Centre, and known colloquially as the Maze or H-Blocks)
• German concentration camps before and during World War II (1933–1945)
• Japanese internment of prisoners of war and civilians during World War II (ended 1945)
• German-American internment camps in World War II (1941–1948)
• Italian-American internment camps in World War II (1941–1943)
• Japanese-American internment camps in World War II (1942–1946)
• Japanese Canadian internment (1942–1949)
• Deoli internment camp in India (1962–1967)
• Omarska camp in Bosnia, 1992
• Dretelj camp (1992–1995)
• Camp Bucca in Iraq (2003–2009)
• Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (1980–2014)

File:Armrefugees.jpg|Armenian refugees collected near the body of a dead horse at Deir ez-Zor, during the Armenian genocide File:Tampere prison camp women.jpg|Women at the Kalevankangas concentration camp of Tampere in 1918, several months after the Finnish Civil War File:Vorkuta a.jpg|Aerial view of the Vorkutlag, a major Russian gulag File:Al-Magroon Concentration Camp.jpg|Inmates at El Agheila, one of the Italian concentration camps during the Italian colonization of Libya File:Boven-Digoel.jpg|Indonesian prisoners being exiled to the Dutch camp of Boven-Digoel, 1927 File:"Persons of Japanese ancestry arrive at the Santa Anita Assembly Center from San Pedro. Evacuees lived at this center at - NARA - 539960.jpg|Manzanar internment camp for Japanese-Americans in 1942 File:New Village in Malaya, 1950s.jpg|A British model new village, designed as part of the Briggs Plan to separate the largely Chinese Malaysian rural populace from communist guerrillas during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) File:Photo de l'infirmerie et des locaux disiplinaire du camp de Thol.jpg|Camp de Thol, one of the French concentration camps for Algerians used during the Algerian War

References

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