Concentration camp

A concentration camp is a large detention center created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. The term refers to situations where the internees are persons selected for their conformance to broad criteria without judicial process, rather than having been judged as individuals. Camps for prisoners of war are usually considered separately from this category, although informally (and in some other languages) they may also be called concentration camps. The word "concentration" indicates a regional concentration, but it also implies the crowded, and often unhealthy, state of the facilities.

The United States

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.

Related Topics:
1838 - Martin Van Buren - U.S. Army - Treaty of New Echota - Indian Removal - Cherokee - Extermination camp - Trail of Tears

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
National Park Service - Shenandoah National Park - Department of Agriculture's

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The term Internment Camp is often used as a euphemistic equivalent in other historical contexts, such as the imprisonment by the United States of German-American people during both World War I and World War II, the internment of enemy aliens, and the exclusion and relocation (much of it forced) of American citizens born of enemy-related ancestry (including Japanese-Americans) during World War II. The relocation camps (such as Manzanar) in the 1940s did not involve extermination like Nazi death camps. Nevertheless, they remain a severe blot on the human rights record of the United States.

Related Topics:
Internment - United States - German-American - Japanese-American - World War II - Relocation - Manzanar

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Critics have labeled the incarceration facilities for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay a concentration camp. No government, and few organizations, seem willing to characterize it as such; for instance, Amnesty International has criticized alleged U.S. mistreatment of detainees, but does not refer to Camp X-Ray as a concentration camp.

Related Topics:
Al-Qaida - Taliban - Camp X-Ray - Guantanamo Bay - Amnesty International

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On January 1, 2005 a Washington Post report shed light on further plans of the US administration in the permanent War on Terror. According to the plans, the government will construct detention centers on the US soil and abroad to hold indefinitely thousands of detainees "whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts", but does not want to release http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/02/indefinite_detention_of_suspects_in_terror_cases_under_us_review/. These facilities would fit the accepted definition much better than, e.g. Guantanamo.

Related Topics:
January 1 - 2005 - War on Terror

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