A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especially prison farms). Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators. Convention no. 105 of the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO), adopted internationally on 27 June 1957, abolished camps of forced labor.[1]
In the 20th century, a new category of labor camps developed for the imprisonment of millions of people who were not criminals per se, but political opponents (real or imagined) and various so-called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes. Some of those camps were dubbed "reeducation facilities" for political coercion, but most others served as backbones of industry and agriculture for the benefit of the state, especially in times of war.[citation needed]
Early-modern states could exploit condemned dissidents and those of suspect political or religious ideology by combining prison and useful work in manning their galleys.[2] This became the sentence of many Christian captives in the Ottoman Empire[3] and of Calvinists (Huguenots) in pre-Revolutionary France.[4]
The Allies of World War II operated a number of work camps after the war. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, it was agreed that German forced labor was to be utilized as reparations. The majority of the camps were in the Soviet Union, but more than one million Germans were forced to work in French coal-mines and British agriculture, as well as 500,000 in US-run Military Labor Service Units in occupied Germany itself.[5] See Forced labor of Germans after World War II.
Beginning in November 1965, people classified as "against the government" were summoned to work camps referred to as "Military Units to Aid Production" (UMAP).[8]
Also between 1950 and 1954 many men were considered "politically unreliable" for compulsory military service, and were conscripted to labour battalions (Czech: Pomocné technické prapory (PTP)) instead.[citation needed]
Registration of Jews by Nazis for forced labor, 1941
During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager (Labor Camps) for different categories of inmates. The largest number of them held Jewish civilians forcibly abducted in the occupied countries (see Łapanka) to provide labor in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads and bridges or work on farms. By 1944, 19.9% of all workers were foreigners, either civilians or prisoners of war.[11]
During the early 20th century, the Empire of Japan used the forced labor of millions of civilians from conquered countries and prisoners of war, especially during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, on projects such as the Death Railway. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a direct result of the overwork, malnutrition, preventable disease and violence which were commonplace on these projects.
North Korea is known to operate six camps with prison-labor colonies in remote mountain valleys. The total number of prisoners in the Kwan-li-so is 150,000 to 200,000. Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea, the defendant and his family are incarcerated for life in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact.[12]
Imperial Russia operated a system of remote Siberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system, called katorga.
The Soviet Union took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely, eventually organizing the Gulag to run the camps. In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, the new Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev began to release political prisoners and close down the camps. By the end of the 1950s, virtually all "corrective labor camps" were reorganized, mostly into the system of corrective labor colonies. Officially, the Gulag was terminated by the MVD order 20 of January 25, 1960.[13]
During the period of Stalinism, the Gulag labor camps in the Soviet Union were officially called "Corrective labor camps". The term "labor colony"; more exactly, "Corrective labor colony", (Russian: исправительно-трудовая колония, abbr. ИТК), was also in use, most notably the ones for underaged (16 years or younger) convicts and captured besprizorniki (street children, literally, "children without family care"). After the reformation of the camps into the Gulag, the term "corrective labor colony" essentially encompassed labor camps.[citation needed]
14 labor camps were operated by the Swedish state during World War II. The majority of internees were communists, but radical social democrats, syndicalists, anarchists, trade unionists, anti-fascists and other "unreliable elements" of Swedish society, as well as German dissidents and deserters from the Wehrmacht, were also interned. The internees were placed in the labor camps indefinitely, without trial, and without being informed of the accusations made against them. Officially, the camps were called "labor companies" (Swedish: arbetskompanier). The system was established by the Royal Board of Social Affairs and sanctioned by the third cabinet of Per Albin Hansson, a grand coalition which included all parties represented in the Swedish Riksdag, with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Sweden.
A painter's impression of a convict ploughing team breaking up new ground at a farm in Port Arthur, Tasmania in the early 20th century
After the war, many former camp inmates had difficulty finding a job, since they had been branded as "subversive elements".[14]
The Goli Otok prison camp for political opponents ran from 1946 to 1956.
Labor camps in the 21st century
China
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, which closed on December 28, 2013, passed a decision on abolishing the legal provisions on reeducation through labor. However, penal labor allegedly continues to exist in Xinjiang re-education camps according to Radio Free Asia.[20]
North Korea is known to operate six camps with prison-labor colonies in remote mountain valleys. The total number of prisoners in the Kwan-li-so is 150,000 – 200,000. Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea, the defendant and his family are incarcerated for lifetime in one of the camps without trial, and are cut off from all outside contact.[12]
^ Edmund Jan Osmańczyk & Anthony Mango (2003). Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: G to M. International relations: Volume 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 1248. ISBN0415939224 – via Google Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
^ Gibson, Mary; Poerio, Ilaria (2018). "Modern Europe, 1750-1950". In Anderson, Clare (ed.). A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN9781350000698. Retrieved 2019-10-07. A second early modern form of punishment, the galleys, constituted a more direct precedent to the earliest hard labour camps. [...] Galley rowing offered no promise of rehabilitation and, in fact, often led to disease and death. However, it shared with the prison workhouses of northern Europe a new aspiration to integrate hard labour into punishment for the eeconomic benefit of the state.
^Magocsi, Paul Robert (1996). A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2 ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press (published 2010). p. 185. ISBN9781442698796. Retrieved 2019-10-07. And what happened to the captives from Ukraine [...]? The slaves functioned at all levels of Ottoman society [...]. At the lowest end of the social scale were galley slaves conscripted into the imperial naval fleet and field hands who labored on Ottoman landed estates.
^ van Ruymbeke, Bertrand (2005). "'A Dominion of True Believers Not a Republic for Heretics': French Colonial Religious Policy and the Settlement of Early louisiana, 1699-1730". In Bond, Bradley G. (ed.). French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 90. ISBN9780807130353. Retrieved 2019-10-07. Andre Zysberg's study shows that [...] nearly 1,500 Huguenots were sentenced to the galleys between 1680 and 1716 [...].
^John Dietrich, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (2002) ISBN1-892941-90-2
^"Burma's forced labour". www.newstatesman.com. 9 June 2008.
^Mühlhahn, Klaus (2009). Criminal Justice in China: A History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press ISBN978-0-674-03323-8. pp. 132-133.
^"A book sheds light on a dark chapter in Cuban history" 2009-11-03 at the Wayback Machine, El Nuevo Herald, January 19, 2003. (in Spanish)
^Sivoš, Jerguš. "Tábory Nucených Prací (TNP) v Československu" (in Czech). totalita.cz. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
^General History of Africa, Albert Adu Boahen, Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa, page 196, 1990
^Herbert, Ulrich (2000). (PDF). International Labor and Working-Class History. 58. doi:10.1017/S0147547900003677. S2CID 145344942. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-09. (offprint)
^ ab"The Hidden Gulag – Part Two: Kwan-li-so Political Panel Labor Colonies (page 25 – 82)" (PDF). The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Retrieved September 20, 2012.
^"Система исправительно-трудовых лагерей в СССР". old.memo.ru.
^Berglund, Tobias; Sennerteg, Niclas (2008). Svenska koncentrationsläger i Tredje rikets skugga. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur. ISBN9789127026957.
^Alcenat, Westenly. "The Case for Haitian Reparations". Jacobin. Retrieved 2021-02-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press: 1994)
^Belleau, Jean-Philippe (2016-01-25). "Massacres perpetrated in the 20th Century in Haiti". Sciences Po. Retrieved 2021-05-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^Belleau, Jean-Philippe (2016-01-25). "Massacres perpetrated in the 20th Century in Haiti". Sciences Po. Retrieved 2021-05-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^Lipes, Joshua (November 12, 2019). "Expert Estimates China Has More Than 1,000 Internment Camps For Xinjiang Uyghurs". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved November 13, 2019.
^(PDF). Army.mil. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2003-04-03.
External links
Media related to Communist labour camps at Wikimedia Commons
Media related to Concentration camps at Wikimedia Commons
March 08, 2023
labor, camp, labor, camp, labour, camp, spelling, differences, work, camp, detention, facility, where, inmates, forced, engage, penal, labor, form, punishment, have, many, common, aspects, with, slavery, with, prisons, especially, prison, farms, conditions, la. A labor camp or labour camp see spelling differences or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons especially prison farms Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators Convention no 105 of the United Nations International Labour Organization ILO adopted internationally on 27 June 1957 abolished camps of forced labor 1 The White Sea Baltic Canal opened on 2 August 1933 was the first major industrial project constructed in the Soviet Union using only forced labor In the 20th century a new category of labor camps developed for the imprisonment of millions of people who were not criminals per se but political opponents real or imagined and various so called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes Some of those camps were dubbed reeducation facilities for political coercion but most others served as backbones of industry and agriculture for the benefit of the state especially in times of war citation needed Contents 1 Precursors 2 Labor camps in the 20th century 2 1 Albania 2 2 Allies of World War II 2 3 Bulgaria 2 4 Burma 2 5 China 2 6 Cuba 2 7 Czechoslovakia 2 8 Italian Libya 2 9 Nazi Germany 2 10 Imperial Japan 2 11 North Korea 2 12 Romania 2 13 Russia and the Soviet Union 2 13 1 Russian Federation 2 14 Sweden 2 15 Turkey 2 16 United States 2 17 Vietnam 2 18 Yugoslavia 3 Labor camps in the 21st century 3 1 China 3 2 North Korea 3 3 United States 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksPrecursors EditEarly modern states could exploit condemned dissidents and those of suspect political or religious ideology by combining prison and useful work in manning their galleys 2 This became the sentence of many Christian captives in the Ottoman Empire 3 and of Calvinists Huguenots in pre Revolutionary France 4 Labor camps in the 20th century EditAlbania Edit Main article Forced labour camps in Communist Albania Allies of World War II Edit The Allies of World War II operated a number of work camps after the war At the Yalta Conference in 1945 it was agreed that German forced labor was to be utilized as reparations The majority of the camps were in the Soviet Union but more than one million Germans were forced to work in French coal mines and British agriculture as well as 500 000 in US run Military Labor Service Units in occupied Germany itself 5 See Forced labor of Germans after World War II Bulgaria Edit Main article Forced labour camps in Communist Bulgaria Burma Edit According to the New Statesman Burmese military government operated from 1962 to 2011 about 91 labour camps for political prisoners 6 China Edit The anti communist Kuomintang operated various camps between 1938 and 1949 including the Northwestern Youth Labor Camp for young activists and students 7 The Chinese Communist Party has operated many labor camps for some crimes at least since taking power in 1949 Many leaders of China were put into labor camps after purges including Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi May Seventh Cadre Schools are an example of Cultural Revolution era labor camps Xinjiang internment campsCuba Edit Beginning in November 1965 people classified as against the government were summoned to work camps referred to as Military Units to Aid Production UMAP 8 Czechoslovakia Edit After the communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948 many forced labor camps were created citation needed The inmates included political prisoners clergy kulaks Boy Scout leaders and many other groups of people that were considered enemies of the state citation needed About half of the prisoners worked in the uranium mines 9 These camps lasted until 1961 citation needed Also between 1950 and 1954 many men were considered politically unreliable for compulsory military service and were conscripted to labour battalions Czech Pomocne technicke prapory PTP instead citation needed Italian Libya Edit During the colonisation of Libya the Italians deported most of the Libyan population in Cyrenaica to concentration camps and used the survivors to build in semi slave conditions the coastal road and new agricultural projects 10 Nazi Germany Edit Polish Jews are lined up by German soldiers to do forced labour September 1939 Nazi occupied Poland Registration of Jews by Nazis for forced labor 1941 During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager Labor Camps for different categories of inmates The largest number of them held Jewish civilians forcibly abducted in the occupied countries see Lapanka to provide labor in the German war industry repair bombed railroads and bridges or work on farms By 1944 19 9 of all workers were foreigners either civilians or prisoners of war 11 The Nazis employed many slave laborers They also operated concentration camps some of which provided free forced labor for industrial and other jobs while others existed purely for the extermination of their inmates A notable example is the Mittelbau Dora labor camp complex that serviced the production of the V 2 rocket See List of German concentration camps for more The Nazi camps played a key role in the extermination of millions Imperial Japan Edit During the early 20th century the Empire of Japan used the forced labor of millions of civilians from conquered countries and prisoners of war especially during the Second Sino Japanese War and the Pacific War on projects such as the Death Railway Hundreds of thousands of people died as a direct result of the overwork malnutrition preventable disease and violence which were commonplace on these projects See also Japanese war crimesNorth Korea Edit North Korea is known to operate six camps with prison labor colonies in remote mountain valleys The total number of prisoners in the Kwan li so is 150 000 to 200 000 Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea the defendant and his family are incarcerated for life in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact 12 See also North Korean prison system dd Romania Edit Main articles Danube Black Sea Canal Creation of the camps and Great Brăila Island Russia and the Soviet Union Edit Main articles Correctional labour camp and Gulag Imperial Russia operated a system of remote Siberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system called katorga The Soviet Union took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely eventually organizing the Gulag to run the camps In 1954 a year after Stalin s death the new Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev began to release political prisoners and close down the camps By the end of the 1950s virtually all corrective labor camps were reorganized mostly into the system of corrective labor colonies Officially the Gulag was terminated by the MVD order 20 of January 25 1960 13 During the period of Stalinism the Gulag labor camps in the Soviet Union were officially called Corrective labor camps The term labor colony more exactly Corrective labor colony Russian ispravitelno trudovaya koloniya abbr ITK was also in use most notably the ones for underaged 16 years or younger convicts and captured besprizorniki street children literally children without family care After the reformation of the camps into the Gulag the term corrective labor colony essentially encompassed labor camps citation needed Russian Federation Edit Main article Corrective labor colony Sweden Edit Main article Internment camps in Sweden during World War II 14 labor camps were operated by the Swedish state during World War II The majority of internees were communists but radical social democrats syndicalists anarchists trade unionists anti fascists and other unreliable elements of Swedish society as well as German dissidents and deserters from the Wehrmacht were also interned The internees were placed in the labor camps indefinitely without trial and without being informed of the accusations made against them Officially the camps were called labor companies Swedish arbetskompanier The system was established by the Royal Board of Social Affairs and sanctioned by the third cabinet of Per Albin Hansson a grand coalition which included all parties represented in the Swedish Riksdag with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Sweden A painter s impression of a convict ploughing team breaking up new ground at a farm in Port Arthur Tasmania in the early 20th century After the war many former camp inmates had difficulty finding a job since they had been branded as subversive elements 14 Turkey Edit Main articles Labour Battalions Ottoman Empire The Twenty Classes and Varlik Vergisi United States Edit During the United States occupation of Haiti the United States Marine Corps and their Gendarmerie of Haiti subordinates enforced a corvee system upon Haitians 15 16 17 The corvee resulted in the deaths of hundreds to thousands of Haitians with Haitian American academic Michel Rolph Trouillot estimating that about 5 500 Haitians died in labor camps 18 In addition Roger Gaillard writes that some Haitians were killed fleeing the camps or if they did not work satisfactorily 19 Vietnam Edit Main article Re education camp Vietnam Yugoslavia Edit The Goli Otok prison camp for political opponents ran from 1946 to 1956 Labor camps in the 21st century EditChina Edit The Standing Committee of the National People s Congress of the People s Republic of China which closed on December 28 2013 passed a decision on abolishing the legal provisions on reeducation through labor However penal labor allegedly continues to exist in Xinjiang re education camps according to Radio Free Asia 20 See also Xinjiang internment camps North Korea Edit North Korea is known to operate six camps with prison labor colonies in remote mountain valleys The total number of prisoners in the Kwan li so is 150 000 200 000 Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea the defendant and his family are incarcerated for lifetime in one of the camps without trial and are cut off from all outside contact 12 See also Prisons in North Korea United States Edit In 1997 a United States Army document was developed that provides guidance on establishing prison camps on US Army installations 21 See also Penal labor in the United StatesSee also EditChain gang Civilian Inmate Labor Program Extermination through labor Memorial society Penal colony SubjugateReferences Edit Edmund Jan Osmanczyk amp Anthony Mango 2003 Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements G to M International relations Volume 2 Taylor amp Francis p 1248 ISBN 0415939224 via Google Books a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link Gibson Mary Poerio Ilaria 2018 Modern Europe 1750 1950 In Anderson Clare ed A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 9781350000698 Retrieved 2019 10 07 A second early modern form of punishment the galleys constituted a more direct precedent to the earliest hard labour camps Galley rowing offered no promise of rehabilitation and in fact often led to disease and death However it shared with the prison workhouses of northern Europe a new aspiration to integrate hard labour into punishment for the eeconomic benefit of the state Magocsi Paul Robert 1996 A History of Ukraine The Land and Its Peoples 2 ed Toronto University of Toronto Press published 2010 p 185 ISBN 9781442698796 Retrieved 2019 10 07 And what happened to the captives from Ukraine The slaves functioned at all levels of Ottoman society At the lowest end of the social scale were galley slaves conscripted into the imperial naval fleet and field hands who labored on Ottoman landed estates van Ruymbeke Bertrand 2005 A Dominion of True Believers Not a Republic for Heretics French Colonial Religious Policy and the Settlement of Early louisiana 1699 1730 In Bond Bradley G ed French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press p 90 ISBN 9780807130353 Retrieved 2019 10 07 Andre Zysberg s study shows that nearly 1 500 Huguenots were sentenced to the galleys between 1680 and 1716 John Dietrich The Morgenthau Plan Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy 2002 ISBN 1 892941 90 2 Burma s forced labour www newstatesman com 9 June 2008 Muhlhahn Klaus 2009 Criminal Justice in China A History Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 03323 8 pp 132 133 A book sheds light on a dark chapter in Cuban history Archived 2009 11 03 at the Wayback Machine El Nuevo Herald January 19 2003 in Spanish Sivos Jergus Tabory Nucenych Praci TNP v Ceskoslovensku in Czech totalita cz Retrieved 2013 03 12 General History of Africa Albert Adu Boahen Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa page 196 1990 Herbert Ulrich 2000 Forced Laborers in the Third Reich An Overview Part One PDF International Labor and Working Class History 58 doi 10 1017 S0147547900003677 S2CID 145344942 Archived from the original PDF on 2013 05 09 offprint a b The Hidden Gulag Part Two Kwan li so Political Panel Labor Colonies page 25 82 PDF The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Retrieved September 20 2012 Sistema ispravitelno trudovyh lagerej v SSSR old memo ru Berglund Tobias Sennerteg Niclas 2008 Svenska koncentrationslager i Tredje rikets skugga Stockholm Natur amp Kultur ISBN 9789127026957 Alcenat Westenly The Case for Haitian Reparations Jacobin Retrieved 2021 02 20 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link U S Invasion and Occupation of Haiti 1915 34 United States Department of State 2007 07 13 Retrieved 2021 02 24 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Paul Farmer The Uses of Haiti Common Courage Press 1994 Belleau Jean Philippe 2016 01 25 Massacres perpetrated in the 20th Century in Haiti Sciences Po Retrieved 2021 05 28 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Belleau Jean Philippe 2016 01 25 Massacres perpetrated in the 20th Century in Haiti Sciences Po Retrieved 2021 05 28 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Lipes Joshua November 12 2019 Expert Estimates China Has More Than 1 000 Internment Camps For Xinjiang Uyghurs Radio Free Asia Retrieved November 13 2019 US Army Civilian Inmate Labor Program PDF Army mil Archived from the original PDF on 2003 04 03 External links Edit Media related to Communist labour camps at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Concentration camps at Wikimedia Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Labor camp amp oldid 1128085187, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
