Internment is the imprisonment or confinement 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.
Early civilizations such as the
Assyrians
used
forced resettlement of
populations as a means of controlling territory, 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, specific
ethnic or
religious
groups,
civilians of a critical
war-zone, or other groups of people, usually
during a war. The term is used for facilities where inmates are
selected according to some specific criteria, rather than
individuals who are
incarcerated 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. 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. Literally, a Concentration Camp is a place
where enemies, perceived undesirables and others are
"concentrated", or all placed together, in one controlled
environment, usually very unpleasantly.
Similar
camps existed earlier, such as in the United States
(concentration camps for Cherokee and other Native American in the
1830s), in Cuba
(1868–78)
and in the Philippines
(1898–1901) by Spain under the Restoration and
the US
respectively. The term finds its roots in
the "reconcentration camps" set up in Cuba by
Valeriano Weyler in
1897 to quell opposition to Spanish rule 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. 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 actually created in the 18th century,
during Bar Confederation, when
Russians
organized 3
concentration camps in Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth for Polish rebel captives, where internees awaited
deportation on to Siberia
.
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 are placed where they cannot provide them with 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 the practice of forced labor
camp (1918-1991) (nominally, the Gulag
(1929-1960)) of the Soviet
Union
. 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 by definition a death-camp. For
example, many of the slave
labor camps
were used as
free sources of factory
labor for the manufacture of war materials and other
goods.
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
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
- Władysław
Konopczyński, Konfederacja barska, t. II, Warszawa 1991, pp. 733-734.
- documents relative to Gulag