Internment

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural Statistical Taste-based
Attributes Age Caste Class Dialect Disability Genetic Hair texture Height Language Looks Mental disorder Race / Ethnicity Skin color Scientific racism Rank Sex Sexual orientation Species Size Viewpoint
Social Arophobia Acephobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-drug addicts Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Elitism Ephebiphobia Social determinants of health Social determinants of health in poverty Social determinants of mental health Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Discrimination against men Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Sectarianism Supremacism White Male Transphobia 21st-century anti-trans movement in the United Kingdom Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Atheism Exclusivism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Christianity Persecution Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Jehovah's Witnesses LDS or Mormon Tewahedo Orthodoxy post–Cold War era Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Ahmadiyya Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism minority Muslim Judaism Persecution Neopaganism Protestantism Rastafari Sikhism Yazidism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national Afghan African Albanian Arab Armenian Asian France South Africa United States Assyrian Azerbaijani Black people African Americans China South Africa Bengali Bulgarian Catalan Chechen Chinese Colombian Croat Filipino Fulani Finnish Georgian Greek Haitian Hazara Hungarian Igbo Indian Indigenous people Australia Canada United States Irish Italian Japanese Jewish Antisemitism New Korean Kurdish Lithuanian Malay Māori Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Nigerian Pakistani Palestinians Pashtun Polish Quebec Romani Romanian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Tatar Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese Welsh
Manifestations Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric SPLC-designated list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups Anti-LGBTQ movemenet in the US Anti-trans movement in the UK Anti-Zionism Blood libel Bullying Cancel culture Capital punishment for homosexuality Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog whistle Domicide Economic Education Employment Eliminationism Enemy of the people Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Excellence Gender-based dress codes Cosmetics policy High heel policy Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime LGBTQ Hate group Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Kill Haole Day Lavender scare LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory List of people killed for being transgender Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Paper genocide Persecution Pogrom Political repression Purge Racialization Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sexual harassment Sex-selective abortion Slut-shaming Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory Wife selling Witch hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Catholic Jewish Gender pay gap Gender roles Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Law for Protection of the Nation LGBTQ rights opposition MSM blood donation restrictions No kid zone Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) One-drop rule Racial quota Racial segregation Jim Crow laws Nuremberg Laws Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Social exclusion Sodomy law State atheism State religion Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Anti-racism Constitutional colorblindness Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity, equity, and inclusion Diversity training Empowerment Fat acceptance movement Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex human rights LGBT rights Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Amatonormativity Bias Cisnormativity Civil liberties Dehumanization Diversity Multiculturalism Neurodiversity Ethnic penalty Figleaf Gender-blind Heteronormativity Historical eugenics Internalized oppression Intersectionality Masculism Medical model of disability autism Net bias Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Racial bias in criminal news in the United States Racism by country Racial color blindness Religious intolerance Reverse discrimination Reverse racism Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social identity threat Social model of disability Social privilege Christian male white Social stigma Speciesism Stereotype threat The talk
v t e

Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges^[1] or intent to file charges.^[2] The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects".^[3] Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement after having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities.^[4] The word internment is also occasionally used to describe a neutral country's practice of detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Convention of 1907.^[5]

Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps, some of which are known as concentration camps. The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps.

The terms concentration camp and internment camp are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic is that inmates are held outside the rule of law.^[6] Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as concentration camps.^[7]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights restricts the use of internment, with Article 9 stating, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."^[8]

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."^[9]

Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s,^[10] the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish:reconcentrados) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878).^[11][12] The label was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902).^[13] And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period.^[11][14]

During the 20th century, the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state reached its most extreme forms in the Soviet Gulag system of concentration camps (1918–1991)^[15] and the Nazi concentration camps (1933–1945). The Soviet system was the first applied by a government on its own citizens.^[12] The Gulag consisted in over 30,000 camps for most of its existence (1918–1991) and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953,^[15] which is only a third of its 73-year lifespan. The Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps^[16] and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees.^[17] The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time.^[18] Moreover, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps, specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing.^[19][20]

As a result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment.^[4]

The "concentration camp" label continues to see expanded use for cases post-World War II, for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960),^[21][22] and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990).^[23] According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China's re-education camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps.^[24][25] The camps were established in the late 2010s under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration.^[26][27]

Scholars have debated the efficacy of internment as a counterinsurgency tactic. A 2023 study found that internment during the Irish war of independence led to greater grievances among Irish rebels and led them to fight longer in the war.^[28]

• North Korean prison camps (1948–present)^[29][30]
• Guantanamo Bay detention camp (2002–present)^[31][32]
• Refugee detention centres in Libya (2011–present)^{[33][34][35][36][37]}
• Uyghur re-education camps in China (2017–present)^[38][39]
• Anti-gay detention camps in Chechnya (2017–present)^{[40][41][42][43]}
• Migrant detentions as part of immigration detention in the United States (2018–present)^{[44][45][46][47]}
• Internment camps in Ethiopia during the Tigray War and the War in Amhara (2020–present).^{[48][49][50][51]}
• Russian filtration camps in Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present)^[52][53][54]
• Sde Teiman detention camp in Israel during the Israel–Hamas war (2024–present)

• Abercorn Barracks, Northern Ireland (sometimes referred to as Ballykinlar Barracks) (1919–1921) (1971)
• Reconcentration policy during Cuba's War of Independence from Spain (1896–1898)
• Second Boer War in South Africa (1900–1902)
• Curragh Camp in Ireland (1939–46 & 1957–59). Curragh Camp was by far the largest, at least 30 other prisons and camps were used throughout the country.^[55]
• Cyprus internment camps (1946–1949)
• Reconcentrados "Zones of Protection" 1901, Philippine-American War
• Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907)
• Concentration of Armenians during the Armenian Genocide (1915–1916)
• Finnish Civil War (1918)
• Frongoch internment camp British camp used for WWI and Irish 1916 Easter Rising prisoners
• Gormanston Camp in the Irish Free State (1922–1923)
• Malayan New villages as part of the Briggs Plan during the Malayan Emergency (1950–1960)
• Italian concentration camps in Africa and Europe (1930–1944)
• HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland (1971–75), previously known as Long Kesh Detention Centre, and known colloquially as the Maze or H-Blocks)
• German concentration camps before and during World War II (1933–1945)
• Japanese internment of prisoners of war and civilians during World War II (ended 1945)
• Japanese-American internment camps in World War II (1942–1946)
• Japanese Canadian internment (1942–1949)
• Deoli internment camp in India (1962–1967)
• Omarska camp in Bosnia, 1992
• Dretelj camp (1992–1995)
• Camp Bucca in Iraq (2003–2009)^[56][57][58]
• Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (1980–2014)^[59][60][61]

• Pitzer, Andrea (2017). One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-30359-0.
• Stone, Dan (2015). Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-879070-9.
• Smith, Iain R.; Stucki, Andreas (September 2011). "The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868–1902)" (PDF). The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 39 (3): 417–437. doi:10.1080/03086534.2011.598746. S2CID 159576119.
• Kotek, Joël (2000). Le siècle des camps (in French). Lattès. p. 805. ISBN 978-2-7096-1884-7. Exhaustive history of the internment camps. Also available in German (Kotek, Joël; Rigoulot, Pierre (2001). Das Jahrhundert der Lager. Propyläen. ISBN 978-3-549-07143-4.)

• Media related to Internment at Wikimedia Commons