Internment
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Internment is the imprisonment or confinement[1] of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as: "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place". Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction between internment, which is being confined usually for preventive or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime.
"Internment" also refers to the practice of neutral countries in time of war in detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment in their territories under the Second Hague Convention.[2]
Early civilizations such as Assyria used forced resettlement of populations as a means of controlling territory,[3] but it was not until much later in the late 19th and the 20th centuries that records exist of groups of civilian non-combatants being concentrated into large prison camps.
Internment camps
An internment camp is a large detention center created for political opponents, enemy aliens, people with mental illness, members of specific ethnic or religious groups, civilian inhabitants of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, usually during a war. The term is used for facilities where the inmates were selected by some generalized criteria, rather than detained as individuals after due process of law fairly applied by a judiciary.
As a result of the mistreatment of civilians interned during recent conflicts, the Fourth Geneva Convention was established in 1949 to provide for the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power.[4] It was ratified by 194 nations. Prisoner-of-war camps are internment camps intended specifically for holding members of an enemy's armed forces as defined in the Third Geneva Convention, and the treatment of whom is specified in that Convention.
Concentration camps
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. defines concentration camp as: a camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated, such as those instituted by Lord Kitchener during the South African war of 1899-1902; one for the internment of political prisoners, foreign nationals, etc., esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45. The Random House Dictionary defines the term as: "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.", and, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it thus: "A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions." Finally, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as: "a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined."
Similar camps existed earlier, such as in the United States (concentration camps for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s); in Cuba (1868–78) and in the Philippines (1898–1901) by Spain and the U.S., respectively.[5] The term originated in the "reconcentration camps" set up in Cuba by General Valeriano Weyler in 1897, during Spain's campaign to suppress rebellion in Cuba. During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa.[6] Ostensibly conceived as a form of humanitarian aid to the families whose farms had been destroyed in the fighting, the camps were used to confine and control large numbers of civilians as part of a scorched earth tactic.
Polish historian Władysław Konopczyński has suggested the first concentration camps were created in Poland in the 18th century, during the Bar Confederation rebellion, when the Russian Empire established three concentration camps for Polish rebel captives awaiting deportation to Siberia. [7]
Use of the word concentration comes from the idea of concentrating a group of people who are in some way undesirable in one place, where they can be watched by those who incarcerated them. For example, in a time of insurgency, potential supporters of the insurgents may be placed where they cannot provide supplies or information.
Nazi and Soviet camps
In the 20th century the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state became more common and reached a climax with Nazi concentration camps (1933-1945) and Soviet forced labor camps (the Gulag, 1929-1960)).[8] As a result of this trend, the term "concentration camp" carries many of the connotations of "extermination camp" and is sometimes used synonymously. A concentration camp, however, is not necessarily a death-camp. For example, slave labor camps were sources of free labor: the inmates were exploited, not killed (though many were worked to death or killed for refusing to work).
Because of these negative connotations, the term "concentration camp", originally itself a euphemism, has been replaced by newer euphemisms such as internment camp, resettlement camp, detention facility, etc., regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp, which can vary a great deal.
List of camps
See also
- Civilian Internee
- List of concentration and internment camps
- Prisoner-of-war camp
- Extermination camp
- Labor camps
- Quasi-criminal
References
- ^ per Oxford Universal Dictionary, 1st edition 1933.
- ^ The Second Hague Convention, 1907
- ^ Laws of Hammurabi
- ^ Full text of 4th Geneva Convention
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
- ^ Documents re camps in Boer War
- ^ Konopczyński, Władysław. (1991) Konfederacja barska, t. II, pp. 733-734.
- ^ documents relative to Gulag