Internment camp for Japanese in Canada during World War II

Internment is the imprisonment or confinement^[1] of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. See also List of Nazi-German concentration camps, Extermination camp Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany under Hitler maintained The Japanese Canadian internment was the internment of more than 22000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War by the Government of Canada. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including 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 preventative or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime. A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned and usually deprived of a range of

"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]. For other uses of Neutral and Neutrality see Neutral A neutral country takes no side in a War between other parties War is an international relations Dispute, characterized by organized Violence between National Military units For the military meaning see Armed forces. For the Soviet sports society see Armed Forces (sports society Armed Forces The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands in 1899 and

Early civilizations such as the Assyrians 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. Early history The most Neolithic site in Assyria is at Tell Hassuna, the center of the Hassuna culture

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. Detention generally refers to a State or Government holding a person in a particular area (generally called a Detention centre) either for Interrogation Political dissent refers to any expression designed to convey dissatisfaction with or opposition to the policies of a governing body In Law an enemy alien is a citizen of a country which is in a state of conflict with the land in which he or she is located Mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as A religion is a set of Tenets and practices often centered upon specific Supernatural and moral claims about Reality, the Cosmos A civilian under International humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her Country 's Armed forces. War is an international relations Dispute, characterized by organized Violence between National Military units 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. A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned and usually deprived of a range of Due process (more fully due process of law) is the principle that a person has a right to receive notice and be heard in an orderly proceeding in order to protect his or her In Law, the judiciary or judicial system is the system of Courts which administer Justice in the name of the sovereign or State

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]. A civilian under International humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her Country 's Armed forces. The Fourth Geneva Convention (or GCIV) relates to the protection of Civilians during times of War " in the hands " of an enemy and under 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. A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of enemy combatants captured by the enemy in time of war and is similar to an Internment camp which is used for civilian For the military meaning see Armed forces. For the Soviet sports society see Armed Forces (sports society Armed Forces The Third Geneva Convention (or GCIII) of 1949 one of the Geneva Conventions, is a treaty agreement that primarily concerns the treatment of Prisoners of

Concentration camps

Boer women and children in a South African concentration camp

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Boer (ˈbuːr in Dutch ˈbʊɚ/ /boʊɚ or /ˈbɔr/ in English is the Dutch word for Farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED) published by the Oxford University Press (OUP is a comprehensive Dictionary of the English 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. Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 1st Earl Kitchener, KG, KP, GCB, OM See also First Boer War,, South African Wars (1879-1915 The Second Boer War ( Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: , esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45.

Buchenwald concentration camp

Although similar camps existed earlier (such as the US Concentration Camps forced on Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s, Cuba (1868–78), the Philippines (1898–1901) by the Spanish and Americans respectively^[5]), the English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War^[6]. Buchenwald concentration camp (German Konzentrationslager or 'KZ' Buchenwald) was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain near The Republic of Cuba (ˈkjuːbə or) consists of the island of Cuba (the largest and second-most populous island of the Greater Antilles) Isla de la The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP The Restoration was the name given to the period that began in December 29 1874 after the First Spanish Republic ended with the restoration of The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located See also First Boer War,, South African Wars (1879-1915 The Second Boer War ( Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Purportedly 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. A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method (possibly more often referred to as a tactic but this is not entirely correct as there is a difference between

At the time that Kitchener started the concentration camps in South Africa the war had entered the guerilla phase and set battles during which farms could be destroyed no longer happened. By destroying crops, livestock and farmsteads under the 'Scorched Earth' policy the Boer fighters were deprived of supplies and shelter. It also left the women and children on such farms destitute and they were forcibly removed, against their will, to the camps where thousands died of disease and starvation.

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, a modern example of which is the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. An insurgency is a violent internal uprising against a sovereign government that lacks the organization of a revolution The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp is a controversial United States Detention center operated by Joint Task Force Guantanamo since 2002 in Guantanamo

Nazi and Soviet camps

The term concentration camp lost some of its original meaning after Nazi concentration camps were discovered, and has ever since been understood to refer to a place of mistreatment, starvation, forced labour, and murder. See also List of Nazi-German concentration camps, Extermination camp Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany under Hitler maintained The expression since then has only been used in this extremely pejorative sense; no government or organization has used it to describe its own facilities, using instead terms such as internment camp, resettlement camp, detention facility, etc, regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp, which can vary a great deal.

Women's labor camp in Gulag. The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. Painting by Nikolai Getman

In the 20th century the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state became more common and reached a climax with Nazi concentration camps and the practice of genocide in Nazi extermination camps, and with the Gulag system of forced labor camps of the Soviet Union^[7]. Nikolai Getman (Николай Гетман Микола Ґетьман an artist was born in 1917 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and died at his home in Orel, Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction in whole or in part of an ethnic racial religious or national group Extermination camps were two types of facilities that Nazi Germany built during World War II for the systematic killing of millions of people in what has become The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in Penal labor. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 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 cheap or free sources of factory labor for the manufacture of war materials and other goods. A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in Penal labor.

Indeed, in terming their camps "concentration camps," the Nazis were using a mundane term to mask something far more horrific than the word had previously meant, similar to their usage of the term 'Ghetto. A ghetto is described as a "portion of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social legal or economic pressure ' Previously, ghettos had been separate, usually walled-in Jewish Quarters designed to segregate Jews from outside society and "protect" them from their neighbors. In the Jewish Diaspora, a Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews Jewish quarters like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, The Ghettos in occupied Europe were far more brutal, however. During World War II Ghettos were established by the German Nazis to confine Jews and sometimes Gypsies into tightly packed areas of the cities

Continued use

Although the term "concentration camp" has become virtually indistinguishable from "death camp" in the popular mind, the two are not identical. The British continued to use the term concentration camp in its original meaning long after the collapse of the Third Reich, with quite possibly the last being the forced but relatively peaceful relocation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese squatters from the edge of the Malayan Jungle to "New Villages" during the Malayan Emergency to choke supply and support off for the Malayan Communist Party. Malaysian Chinese is a Malaysian of Chinese origin Most are descendants of Chinese who arrived between the fifteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries New Villages ( Chinese: 新村 Malay: Kampung Baru) also known as Chinese New Villages (Chinese 华人新村 are settlements created The Malayan Emergency was a State of emergency declared by the British colonial government of Malaya in 1948 and lifted in 1960 as well as an insurrection and The Malayan Communist Party ( MCP) was founded in 1930 Illegal from the outset it advocated an end to British colonial rule and was active in forming Trade The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, although technically a concentration camp in its original sense, is only referred to as such by entities outside US influence, such as Cuba^[8]. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp is a controversial United States Detention center operated by Joint Task Force Guantanamo since 2002 in Guantanamo The Republic of Cuba (ˈkjuːbə or) consists of the island of Cuba (the largest and second-most populous island of the Greater Antilles) Isla de la

On 1971 the British government introduced imprisonment without trial in Northern Ireland. 342 men the majority of whom were Roman Catholic were interred mainly in the Maze prison.

List of camps

Main article: List of concentration and internment camps

See also

• Civilian Internee
• List of concentration and internment camps
• Prisoner-of-war camp
• Extermination camp
• Labor camps
• Quasi-criminal

References