Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:35, 26 May 2006

This is a list of Internment and Concentration camps, organised by country.

Argentina

During the Dirty War which accompanied the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, there were about 100 places throughout the country that served as concentration camps in the Nazi sense, where people were interrogated, tortured, and killed, but not forced to work or concentrated for eventual release. Prisoners were often forced to hand and sign over property, in acts of individual, rather than official and systematic, corruption. Small children who were taken with their relatives, and babies born to prisoners, were frequently given for adoption to politically acceptable, often military, families. This is documented by a number of cases dating since the 1990s in which adopted children have identified their real families .

These were relatively small secret detention centres rather than actual camps. The peak years were 1976-78. Nearly 9,000 people are definitely known to have been killed: see the authoritative 1984 CONADEP (Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) Report. It states that "We have reason to believe that the true figure is much higher"; a figure of 30,000 is often quoted. This worst case total figure, although frightful, is a small fraction of the throughput of just one of the smaller Nazi camps. A list of camps, full details, and documentation are to be found in the Report.

Austria-Hungary

During the First World War, internment camps were set up, mostly for Serbs and other pro-Serbian Yugoslavs. Men, women, the children and the elderly were displaced from their homes and sent to concentration camps all over the Empire such as Doboj (46,000), Arad, Győr, Neusiedl am See.

Some 20 thousand pro-Russian Ukrainians were incarcerated in concentration camp Talerhof (Austrian province of Styria) from September 4, 1914 until May 10 1917. A full third of the prisoners held died either by being shot gassed, or from shock after experimental surgeries by doctors who were figuring out the pain threshold of humans.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

According to the Alliance of Detainees of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period between 1992 and 1995, 520 camps and detention facilities existed under Serb control, which were active in 50 different municipalities in Bosnia. Estimates of how many people were detained there range from a provisional minimum estimate by the Alliance of Detainees of 100,000 people and up to 200,000 people reported by other sources, including non-governmental organizations . Following are some of the detention camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina operated by one of the three armies, sorted in alphabetical order:

Numerous atrocities were committed against prisoners, subject to ICTY prosecution. Some indictments include war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The British

South Africa

The term concentration camp was first used by the British military during the Boer War (1899-1902). Facing attack by Boer guerrillas, British forces rounded up the Boer women and children as well as black people living on Boer land, and sent them to 34 tented camps scattered around South Africa. This was done as part of a scorched earth policy to deny the boer guerrillas access to the supplies of food and clothing they needed to continue the war.

The camps were situated at Aliwal North, Balmoral, Barberton, Belfast, Bethulie, Bloemfontein, Brandfort, Heidelberg, Heilbron, Howick, Irene, Kimberley, Klerksdorp, Kroonstad, Krugersdorp, Merebank, Middelburg, Norvalspont, Nylstroom, Pietermaritzburg, Pietersburg, Pinetown, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom, Springfontein, Standerton, Turffontein, Vereeniging, Volksrust, Vredefort and Vryburg.

Though they were not extermination camps, the women and children of Boer men who were still fighting were given smaller rations than others. The poor diet and inadequate hygiene led to endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities, this led to large numbers of deaths — a report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boer (of whom 22,074 were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the camps. In all, about 25% of the Boer inmates and 12% of the black African ones died (although recent research suggests that the black African deaths were underestimated and may have actually been around 20,000).

In contrast to these figures, only around 3,000 Boer men were killed (in combat) during the Second Boer War.

A delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, Emily Hobhouse, did much to publicise the distress of the inmates on her return to Britain after visiting some of the camps in the Orange Free State. Her fifteen-page report caused uproar, and led to a government commission, the Fawcett Commission, visiting camps from August to December 1901 which confirmed her report. They were highly critical of the running of the camps and made numerous recommendations, for example improvements in diet and provision of proper medical facilities. By February 1902 the annual death-rate dropped to 6.9 % and eventually to 2 %. Improvements made to the white camps were not as swiftly extended to the black camps. Hobhouse's pleas went mostly unheeded in the latter case.

Namibia (German South-West Africa)

During World War I, South African troops (then a part of the British Empire) invaded neighboring German South-West Africa. German settlers were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg.

The Isle of Man

The British interned German and Austrian aliens that they rounded up after the start of World War II,

During World War II, about 8,000 people were interned in Britain, many being held in Douglas on the Isle of Man. They included enemy aliens, refugees who had fled from Germany, and suspected British Nazi sympathisers, such as British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley. Initially the British government rounded up 74,000 German and Austrian aliens, but within 6 months the 112 alien tribunals had individually summoned and examined 64,000 aliens, and the the vast majority were released, having been found to be "friendly aliens" (mostly Jews); examples include Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold and members of the Amadeus Quartet. British nationals were detained under Defence Regulation 18B. Eventually only 2,000 of the remainder were interned. Initially they were shipped overseas, but that was halted when a German U boat sank the SS Arandora Star in July 1940 with the loss of 800 internees, though this was not the first loss that had occurred. The last internees were released late in 1945, though many were released in 1942. In Britain, internees were housed in camps and prisons. Some camps had tents rather than buildings with internees sleeping directly on the ground. Men and women were separated and most contact with the outside world was denied. A number of prominent Britons including writer H. G. Wells campaigned against the internment of refugees.

Cyprus

After World War II British efforts to prevent Jewish emigration into Palestine led to the construction of camps in Cyprus where up to 30,000 Holocaust survivors were held at any one time to prevent their entry into Palestine. Over time 50,000 people were imprisoned in the camps and over 2,000 children born there. After the creation of the state of Israel the British government continued to hold 8,000 Jews of 'military age' and 3,000 of their wives in order to prevent them joining the fighting. They were released in February 1949 (Source: N. Bogner, The Deportation Island: Jewish Illegal Immigrant Camps on Cyprus 1946-1948, Tel-Aviv 1991 in Hebrew).

Kenya

During the 1954-60 Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, camps were established to hold suspected rebels. It is unclear how many were held but estimates range up to 1.5 million - or practically the entire Kikuyu population. Between 130,000 and 300,000 are thought to have died as a result. Maltreatment is said to have included torture and summary executions. In addition as many as a million members of the Kikuyu tribe were subjected to ethnic cleansing. (Sources: . R. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990 page 180; C. Elkins,“Detention, Rehabilitation & the Destruction of Kikuyu Society”in Mau Mau and Nationhood, Editors Odhiambo and Lonsdale, Oxford 2003 pages 205-7; C. Elkins, "Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End Of Empire In Kenya", 2005).

Channel Islands

Alderney in the Channel Islands was the only place in the British Isles where German concentration camps were established during the Occupation of the Channel Islands. In January 1942, the occupying German forces established four camps, called Helgoland, Norderney, Borkum and Sylt (after the German North Sea islands), where captive Russians and other east Europeans were used as slave labour to build Atlantic Wall defences on the island. Around 460 prisoners died in the Alderney camps.

Northern Ireland

During the Anglo-Irish War, 12,000 Irishmen were held without trial.

One of the most famous example of modern internment—and one which made world headlines—occurred in Northern Ireland in 1971, when hundreds of nationalists and republicans were arrested by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the orders of the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner, with the backing of the British government. Historians generally view that period of internment as inflaming sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland while failing in its stated aim of arresting members of the paramilitary Provisional IRA, because many of the people arrested were completely unconnected with that organisation but had had their names appear on the list of those to be interned through bungling and incompetence, and over 100 IRA men escaped arrest. The backlash against internment and its bungled application contributed to the decision of the British government under Prime Minister Edward Heath to suspend the Stormont governmental system in Northern Ireland and replace it with direct rule from London, under the authority of a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

From 1971 internment began, beginning with the arrest of 342 suspected republican guerrillas and paramilitary members on August 9. They were held at HM Prison Maze. By 1972, 924 men were interned. Serious rioting ensued, and 23 people died in three days. The British government attempted to show some balance by arresting some loyalist paramilitaries later, but out of the 1,981 men interned, only 107 were loyalists. Internment was ended in 1975, but had resulted in increased support for the IRA and created political tensions which culminated in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike and the death of Bobby Sands MP. The imprisonment of people under anti-terrorism laws specific to Northern Ireland continued until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but these laws required the right to a fair trial be respected. However non-jury Diplock courts tried paramilitary-related trials, to prevent jury intimidation.

Many of those interned were held in a prison called Long Kesh, later known as the Maze Prison outside Belfast.

The republican song The Men Behind the Wire was composed in response to the internment.

Internment had previously been used as a means of repressing the Irish Republican Army. It was used between 1939 - 1945 and 1956 - 1962. On all these occasions, internment has had a somewhat limited success.

War on Terrorism

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was passed allowing the indefinite detention without charge, trial or prisoner of war status, of foreigners designated "suspected international terrorists" by the Home Secretary, but cannot be deported under existing immigration powers because they may face human rights abuses. In order to pass this statute, the British government declared a state of emergency and opted out of part of the European Convention on Human Rights referring to the right to liberty. The internees can choose to leave Britain voluntarily, if any other country lets them in. The legislation was judged to be illegal by the British courts and so HMG has initiated house arrest under temporay legislation.

Cambodia

Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime: see the article Democratic Kampuchea.

Canada

In World War I, 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" were interned, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, most of whom were probably ethnic Ukrainians. Many of these internees were used for forced labor in internment camps, including the creation of Banff National Park. See Ukrainian Canadian internment.

During World War II, Canada followed the U.S. lead in interning residents of Japanese and Italian ancestry. The Canadian government also interned citizens it deemed dangerous to national security. This included both fascists (including Canadians such as Adrien Arcand who had negotiated with Hitler to obtain positions in the government of Canada once Canada was conquered), Montreal mayor Camilien Houde (for denouncing conscription) and union organizers and other people deemed to be dangerous Communists. Such internment was made legal by the Defence of Canada Regulations, Section 21 of which read:

The Minister of Justice, if satisfied that, with a view to preventing any particular person from acting in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the State, it is necessary to do so, may, notwithstanding anything in these regulations, make an order directing that he be detained by virtue of an order made under this paragraph, be deemed to be in legal custody.

There were internment camps near Petawawa, Ontario; Kananaskis, Alberta;and Hull, Quebec.

Further Information

• Internment of Ukrainians in Canada 1914-1920 at InfoUkes
• Re: internment of Ukrainian Canadians by Orest Martynowych, Ukrainian Weekly

See Dangerous Patriots: Canada's Unknown Prisoners of War, by William Repka and Kathleen Repka, New Star Books, Vancouver, 1982 (ISBN 0-919573-06-1 or ISBN 0-919573-07-X). This book is a collection of first-hand stories from Canadian political prisoners during World War Two.

Chile

Under Pinochet's dictatorship, the Estadio Nacional de Chile in Santiago served as a concentration camp for political opponents. Many other smaller camps existed throughout the country.

Croatia

The Ustaše established concentration camps for Serbs.

Finland

In the aftermath of the Finnish Civil War of 1918, some 75,000 enemy prisoners of war of the losing side and suspected Communists were incarcerated in camps. While 125 Communist prisoners were convicted of treason and executed, an estimated 12,000 died of disease and starvation and an unknown number lost their lives after release, some of them shot after return to their home villages.

When the Finnish Army during the Continuation War occupied East Karelia 1941–1944 that was inhabited by ethnically related Finnic Karelians (although it never had been a part of Finland — or before 1809 of Sweden-Finland), several concentration camps were set up for Russian civilians. The first camp was set up on 24 October, 1941, in Petrozavodsk. The two largest groups were 6,000 Russian refugees and 3,000 inhabitants from the southern bank of River Svir forcibly evacuated because of the closeness of the front line. Around 4,000 of the prisoners perished due to malnourishment, 90% of them during the spring and summer 1942. The ultimate goal was to move the Russian speaking population to German-occupied Russia in exchange for any Finnic population from these areas, and also help to watch civilians.

Population in the Finnish camps:

• 13,400 — December 31, 1941
• 21,984 — July 1, 1942
• 15,241 — January 1, 1943
• 14,917 — January 1, 1944

France

Under Nazi occupation, the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, in Alsace, was one Nazi-run concentration camp on French soil during the Second World War -- the three departments of Alsace-Lorraine (Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin and Moselle) had been annexed and incorporated into the Third Reich. The French authorities also ran deportation camps such as the one at Drancy. Camps also existed in the Pyrenees, on the border with pro-Nazi Spain, one of which was called Camp De Gurs.

During France's occupation of Algeria, large numbers of Algerians were forced into "tent cities" and concentration camps both during the initial French invasion in 1830s, and particularly during the Algerian War of Independence.

During the early part of the colonial period, camps were used mostly to forcibly remove Arabs, Berbers and Turks from fertile areas of land and replace them by primarily French, Spanish, and Maltese settlers. It has been estimated that from 1830 to 1900, between 15 and 25% of the Algerian population died in such camps.

During the Algerian War of Independence the populations of whole villages which were suspected to have supported the rebel FLN were incarcerated in such camps.

Germany

Main article: Nazi concentration camps. See also: List of concentration camps of Nazi Germany, Holocaust

Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or KZ) rose to notoriety during their use in Germany during the Nazi era. The general populace referred to them as Kah-Tzets (the initials KZ in German). The Nazi regime maintained concentration camps as labor camps and prisons since the beginning of their regime in 1933. After the beginning of the war, they also established extermination camps for the industrialized mass murder of the Jews of Europe, called the Holocaust, starting in 1941. Over three million Jews would die in these extermination camps, which included Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The victims were primarily killed by gassing, usually in gas chambers, although many prisoners were murdered in mass shootings or perished from hard labor and a starvation diet.

Prisoners in Nazi concentration and labor camps were also treated horrifically, and many died: worked to death on short rations and in bad conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Slave labor was used by many German companies, who established their own sub-camps. Guards were known to engage in target practice, using their prisoners as targets. During World War II, these concentration camps for "undesirables" were spread throughout Europe, with new camps being created near centers of dense "undesirable" populations, often focusing on areas with large populations of Jews, Polish intelligentsia, communists, or Roma. Most of the camps were located in the area of the General Government in occupied Poland. The transportation of prisoners was often carried out under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before they reached their destination. Concentration camps for Jews and other "undesirables" also existed in Germany itself, and while not specifically designed for systematic extermination, like the extermination camps, many concentration camp prisoners died because of harsh conditions or were executed.

It is estimated that up to ten million people died in Nazi concentration camps, of them six million were killed in the 15 larger ones.

Republic of Ireland

Internment has also been used as a means of suppressing the Irish Republican Army in the Republic of Ireland. It was used during and after the Irish Civil War (June 1922–April 1923), between 1939 and 1945 to safeguard the state's neutrality during WWII (the Emergency), and between 1956 and 1962 during the IRA's Border Campaign.

Italy

People's Republic of China

Concentration camps in the People's Republic of China are called Laogai, which means "reform through labor". The communist-era camps began at least in the 1960s and were filled with anyone who had said anything critical of the government, or often just random people grabbed from their homes to fill quotas. The entire society was organized into small groups in which loyalty to the government was enforced, so that anyone with dissident viewpoints was easily identifiable for enslavement. These camps were modern slave labor camps, organized like factories.

There are accusations that Chinese labor camp produce products are often sold in foreign countries with the profits going to the PRC government. Products include everything from green tea to industrial engines to coal dug from mines.

The use of prison labor is an interesting case study of the interaction between capitalism and prison labor. On the one hand, the downfall of socialism has reduced revenue to local governments increasing pressure for local governments to attempt to supplement their income using prison labor. On the other hand, prisoners do not make a good workforce, and the products produced by prison labor in China are of extremely low quality and have become unsellable on the open market in competition with products made by ordinary paid labor.

An insider's view from the 1950s to the 1990s is detailed in the books of Harry Wu, including Troublemaker and The Laogai. He spent almost all of his adult life as a prisoner in these camps for criticizing the government while he was a young student in college. He almost died several times, but eventually escaped to the US. Party officials have argued that he far overstates the present role of Chinese labor camps and ignores the tremendous changes that have occurred in China since then.

See also: human rights in the People's Republic of China

Poland

Following the First World War it was erected concentration camps for German civilian population in the areas that became part of Poland, including camps Szczypiorno and Stralkowo. In the camps the inmates were abused and tortured.

After 1926 several other concentration camps were erected, not only for Germans, but also for Ukrainians and other minorities in Poland. It included camps Bereza-Kartuska and Brest-Litowsk. Official casualities for the camps are not known, however it has been estimated that many Ukrainians died.

From the start of 1939 until the German invasion in september a number of more concentration camps for Germans, including Chodzen, were erected. Also German population were subject to mass arrest and violent pogroms, which led to thousands of Germans fleeing. In 1,131 places in Poznan/Posen and Pomerania German civilians were sent into marchs to concentration camps. Infamous is the pogrom against Germans in Bydgoszcz/Bromberg, known to many Germans as Bromberger Blutsonntag.

Following the Second World War the Soviet-installed Stalinist regime in Poland erected 1,255 concentrations camps for German civilians in the eastern parts of Germany that were occupied and annexed by Communist Poland. The inmates were mostly civilians that had not been able to flee the advancing Red Army or had not wanted to leave their homes. Often were entire villages including babies and small children sent to the concentrations camps, the only reason being they spoke German. Some of them were also Polish citizens. Many anticommunists were also sent to concentration camps. The death rate in the camps were between 20 and 50 %. Some of the most infamous concentration camps were Toszek/Tost, Lamsdorf, Potulice, Świętochłowice/Schwientochlowitz. Inmates in the camps were abused, tortured, maltreated, exterminated and deliberately given low food rations and epidemies were created. Some of the best known concentration camp commanders were Lola Potok, Czeslaw Geborski and Salomon Morel. Several of them, including Morel, were Jewish Communists. Morel is currently hiding in Israel, and has been charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity by Poland.

The American Red Cross, the US Senator Langer of North-Dacota, the British embassador Bentinck and the British prime minister Winston Churchill protested against the Polish concentration camps, and demanded that the Communist authorities in Soviet-occupied Poland respected the Geneva Conventions and international law, however internationals protests were ignored by the Communists.

At least between 60,000 and 80,000 German civilians were murdered in the Communist Polish concentration camps.

Russia and the Soviet Union

In Imperial Russia, labor camps were known under the name katorga.

In the Soviet Union, concentration camps were called simply camps, almost always plural ("lagerya"). These were used as forced labor camps, and were often filled with political prisoners. After Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book they have become known to the rest of the world as Gulags, after the branch of NKVD (state security service) that managed them. (In the Russian language, the term is used to denote the whole system, rather than individual camps.)

In addition to what is sometimes referred to as the GULAG proper (consisting of the "corrective labor camps") there were "corrective labor colonies", originally intended for prisoners with short sentences, and "special resettlements" of deported peasants. At its peak, the system held a combined total of 2,750,000 prisoners. The total number of people who passed through the camps is, of course, much larger.

There are records of reference to concentration camps by Soviet officials (including Lenin) as early as December 1917. While the primary purpose of Soviet camps was not mass extermination of prisoners, in many cases the outcome was death or permanent disabilities. The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labor system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1,054,000, including political and common prisoners; this does not include nearly 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries" outside the camp system. From 1932 to 1940, at least 390,000 peasants died in places of peasant resettlement; this figure may overlap with the above, but, on the other hand, it does not include deaths outside the 1932-1940 period, or deaths among non-peasant internal exiles. Indirect estimates by some authors state that as many as 40,000,000 Soviet civilians died in camps, starved, or were executed between 1917 and 1957. For example, in some uranium mines the average life expectancy of a prisoner, forced to mine radioactive ore, was as low as 6 months. During the war years 1941-1945 the life expectancy of a prisoner was even shorter.

After the WWII, some 3,000,000 German soldiers and civilians were sent to Soviet labor camps, as part of reparations by labor force. Only about 2,000,000 returned to Germany.

A special kind of forced labor, informally called sharashka, was for engineering and scientific labor. The famous Soviet rocket designer Sergey Korolev worked in a "sharashka", as did Lev Termen and many other prominent Russians. Solzhenitsyn's book The First Circle describes life in a sharashka.

An extensive List of Gulag camps is being compiled based on official sources.

Serbia

• Banjica concentration camp (near Belgrade)
• Sajmište concentration camp (near Belgrade)
• Crveni krst (in Niš)
• Dulag 183 (in Šabac)
• Svilara (Pančevo)
• Paračin

Slovakia

During the Second World War, the Slovak government made a small number (Novaky, Sered) of transit camps for Jewish citizens. They were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbruck concentration camps. For German help with Aryanization of Slovakia, the Slovak government paid a fee of 500 Reichsmark per Jew.

Netherlands

During WWII, one of few official Nazi concentration camp complexes in western Europe located outside of Germany and Austria was near 's-Hertogenbosch, known in German as Herzogenbusch, see List of subcamps of Herzogenbusch. Still another one was camp Westerbork, which served as a transit camp (Durchgangslager) of Jews (Dutch and refugees) and Gypsies to extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibór. (Westerbork had been built in 1939 by the Dutch government for interning Jewish refugees.)

North Korea

Main article: Human rights in North Korea

Location of Known Concentration Camps
North Province of Hamkyong-Life Imprisonment Zone
1. Onsong Changpyong Family Camp No. 12 (relocated in May 1987)
2. Chongsong Family Camp No. 13 (relocated in December 1990)
3. Hoeryong Family Camp No. 22
4. Chongjin Singles' Prison No. 25
5. Kyongsong Family Camp No. 11 (relocated in October 1989)
6. Hwasong Family Camp No. 16
South Province of Hamkyong
7. Yodok Offenders and Family Camp No. 15
 (sectors for re-education and life imprisonment)
North Province of Pyong'an
8. Chonma Family Camp No. 27 (relocated in November 1990)
South Province of Pyong'an
9. Kaechon Family Camp No. 14
10. Pyongyang Seungho Area Hwachon dong Offender's Camp No. 26 (relocated in January 1990)

North Korea is known to operate five concentration camps, currently accommodating a total of over 200,000 prisoners, though the only one that has allowed outside access is Camp #15 in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province. Once condemned as political criminals in North Korea, the defendant and his or her family are incarcerated in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact. Prisoners reportedly work 14 hour days at hard labor and/or ideological re-education. Starvation and disease are commonplace. Political criminals invariably receive life sentences, however their families are usually released after 3 year sentences, if they pass political examinations after extensive study.

Concentration camps came into being in North Korea in the wake of the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. Those persons considered "adversary class forces", such as landholders, Japanese collaborators, religious devotees and families of those who migrated to the South, were rounded up and detained in a large facility. Additional camps were established later in earnest to incarcerate political victims in power struggles in the late 1950s and 60s and their families and overseas Koreans who migrated to the North. The number of camps saw a marked increase later in the course of cementing the Kim Il Sung dictatorship and the Kim Jong-il succession. About a dozen concentration camps were in operation until the early 1990s, the figure of which is believed to have been curtailed to five today due to increasing criticism of the North's perceived human rights abuses from the international community and the North's internal situation.

Perhaps the most well-known depiction of life in the North Korean camps has been provided by Kang Chol-hwan in his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang.

United States

Indigenous People

The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of 1838, when President Martin Van Buren ordered the U.S. Army to enforce the Treaty of New Echota (an Indian Removal treaty) by rounding up the Cherokee into prison camps before relocating them. Although these camps were not intended to be extermination camps, and there was no official policy to kill people, some Indians were raped and/or murdered by US soldiers. Many more died in these camps due to disease, which spread rapidly because of the close quarters and bad sanitary conditions: see the Trail of Tears.

Throughout the remainder of the Indian Wars, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 27 years.

Philippines

On December 7, 1901, during the Philippine-American War, General J. Franklin Bell began a concentration camp policy in Batangas - everything outside the "dead lines" was systematically destroyed: humans, crops, domestic animals, houses, and boats. A similar policy had been quietly initiated on the island of Marinduque some months before.

Shenandoa

Between 1935 and 1937, the National Park Service forcibly relocated 437 families from what is now Shenandoah National Park into "resettlements" administered by the Department of Agriculture's Resettlement Administration, then burned or removed their homes.

WWI and WWII

During World Wars I and II, many people deemed to be a threat due to enemy connections were interned in the US. This included people not born in the U.S. and also U.S. citizens of Japanese (in WWII), Italian (in WWII), and German ancestry. In particular, over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans and Germans and German-Americans were sent to camps such as Manzanar during the second World War. Some compensation for property losses was paid in 1948, and the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment in 1988, saying that it was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership", and paid reparations to former Japanese inmates who were still alive, while paying no reparations to interned Italians or Germans.

In reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan in 1941, United States Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Under this order all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from Western coastal regions to guarded camps in Arkansas, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona; German and Italian citizens, permanent residents, and American citizens of those respective ancestries (and American citizen family members) were removed from (among other places) the West and East Coast and relocated or interned, and roughly one-third of the US was declared an exclusionary zone.

Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens would eventually be removed from their homes as part of the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history.

See: Japanese internment in the United States

Funter Bay is where Aleuts were interned during WWII.

War on Terrorism

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks at least 2 US citizens, José Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi, have been detained without charge, trial or prisoner of war status by order of the President as "enemy combatants", without Congress passing a statute allowing internment.

Some critics have described the incarceration facility for detainees stated to be enemy combatants or associated with terrorism (but not formally accused, or subject to legal process) at Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay as a concentration camp. No government, and few organizations, seem willing to use these words; for instance, Amnesty International has criticized the U.S. treatment of detainees, but does not refer to Camp X-Ray as a concentration camp.

In February 2006 a United Nations report called on the United States to immediately close the Guantánamo Bay facility, listing abuses and violations of human rights and of medical ethics, and saying that certain practices at the prison camp "must be assessed as amounting to torture" and go beyond what international law permits . The U.S. rejected the report's findings.

Again in May 2006 a key U.N. panel joined European and United Nations leaders in urging the Bush administration to close its prison in Guantanamo Bay , saying the indefinite detention of terror suspects there violates the world's ban on torture.

Hundreds of detainees are also imprisoned at US Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. They have all been denied prisoner of war status and most have yet to be charged with a crime. Human Rights Watch says they must legally be treated as prisoners of war since an independent tribunal has not ruled that any of them are unlawful combatants on an individual basis. Those who have been charged face Military Commissions (rather than courts-martial or civilian federal courts) and this has been condemned by many as unfair.

The majority of the detainees are suspected Afghan soldiers and Al Qaeda militants captured by US troops in Afghanistan. However, several were kidnapped or illicitly transferred from other countries with which the US is not at war. A British national was captured by the CIA in Pakistan, apparently with the collusion of security forces. His transfer was a violation of Pakistani law because he was not extradited. Several men were allegedly abducted by the CIA in Bosnia after a Human Rights Court (which had been set up with US help in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing and war) ruled that the Americans must release them.

Notes

1. Report of Conadep (Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) - 1984. English translation
2. International Court of Justice, The Hague: in the case concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro)
3. Bosnia Report - August - September 2003: The most massive of all mass graveyards
4. Institute for War and Peace reporting - COURTSIDE: Keraterm Camp Trial - Genocide Charges Dropped
5. CESIC (IT-95-10/1) Case Information Sheet
6. Human Rights Watch - The Role Of The Prijedor Authorities During The War And After The Signing Of The Dayton Peace Agreement
7. Der Tagespeigel online 22 February 2006: Mladic brought to Justice?
8. Institute for War and Peace reporting - COURTSIDE: Prijedor Genocide Trial
9. These numbers vary widely, and were frequently manipulated by various sides during Yugoslavia's history, see Jasenovac concentration camp.
10. Report about products produced under forced labor (focuses on the persecution of Falun Gong)
11. Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Stuart Creighton Miller, (Yale University Press, 1982). p. 208
12. Did you know Aleuts were sent to interrment camps during WWII? Documentary film tells their story
13. INternational Herlad Tribune - UN calls on U.S. to close Guantanamo camp
14. Forbes - Update 22: U.N. Urges U.S. to Shut Guantanamo Prison

See also

• Internment
• Enemy alien
• Habeas corpus
• House arrest

• Imprisonment and detention
• Internments