By Gossip Boy
14th August, 2021

The history of concentration camps extends back to the 19th century when two inventions, barbed wire and the automatic rifle made it possible for a small number of guards to control larger populations. So today, we want to ask the question, why did concentration and internment camps start, and under what circumstances are they being used on civilian populations around the world to this day?
In 1895 long before the battle of world war 1 (WW I) and world war 2 (WW II). The Spanish governor of Cuba, Arsenio Martinez Campos introduced a new term in the realm of modern warfare "reconcentracion". But this man who introduced the word to the world refused to implement it on the island saying " I cannot as a representative of a civilian nation be the first to give the example of cruelty and intransigence". However, after he left the island. His successor Valeriano Weyler, also known as "the butcher" , did implement the policy on the island. Over 15000 people in Cuba die. He was seen as a brutal man in the US and yet he maintained a position that his "reconcentracion" policy was merited. On May 3, 1898, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, " … I am a soldier and I have never considered it my duty to wrap up my rifle balls in wadding lest I hurt my enemy". Wayler's ternary in Cuba had consequences for the world, numerous countries merit his strategy in the decades that followed.
Countries like the US and Britain who advocate for human rights implemented this policy one way or the other. In the US, approximately 6000 German immigrants, mostly men, were imprisoned in camps. The conditions in these camps resulted in some suicides and disease outbreaks. Forced imprisonment occurred again during WWII where 120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to camps. Activist groups offered that we refer to these camps as incarceration or prisons in order to fully explicate the Japanese-Americans force removal during WWII.
However, it's the concentration or incarceration in Europe during WWII, particularly German, that gives our popular understanding of concentration camps today. Places like Auschwitz marks a new era of already model of warfare that saw the systematic murder of millions of Jewish people as well as ethnic minority groups. By the end of the war in 1945, the death count from these camps had reached over 10 million people. Prisoners in these camps were subjected to torture, human experiment and mass death. What began in Cuba in 1895 unleashed a new strategy of warfare, that meant more civilians than ever could be detained, mistreated or even killed in the name of military action. Today China and Myanmar has been in the news for accusations of sending Muslim minorities to internment camps, allegations which both governments deny say these camps are re-education camps. Anytime this kind of policy is used people come up with new ways of calling it to fit the season. Concentration camps, internment camps, mass incarcerations, and re-education camps all follow a systematic way of suppressing a minority in an area.

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