A Concentration Camp by any other name......?

       One of those “where did this come from” popups on my e-mail is a site called “Poll King” which generally asks political opinion questions and displays the answers by political persuasion and gender. Today’s question was “Is it ‘Fair’ (what a squishy term, huh?) to compare Border Detention Centers to Concentration Camps?”  In addition to the gross overuse of capital letters the question begs the issue that anything can be compared to anything else, though it be a ludicrous comparison.

         Those points aside, however, let’s endeavor to educate ourselves a bit. The modern term “concentration camp” is viscerally perceived by most of those of us with a conscience as something akin to the horrors of German labor and death camps of WW II. There is little doubt in my mind that the average individual believes that the term and the concept began there. Not so. IN truth, there have been some version of "concentration camps as long as victors have forced losers, civilian and/or military, to labor for them."  So, what is a concentration camp by definition? 

 Definition of concentration camp: “A place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”  Obviously, the Border Detention centers meet this definition.    

        The term (not the concept as we shall see) was actually born in Cuba, and in Spanish, (reconcentración). It stems from the Spanish attempting to keep Cuban rebels under control. There was no “death camp” concept, yet many non combatants died of disease and hunger. Civilians were forced, on penalty of death, to move into these encampments, and within a year the island held tens of thousands of dead or dying reconcentrados, who were lionized as martyrs in U.S. newspapers. No mass executions were necessary; horrific living conditions and lack of food eventually took the lives of some 150,000 people.

        The sad fact is that after Spain surrendered to US forces, the camps weren’t immediately disestablished. Huh? Remember, the Spanish American war was also fought in the Philippines. By the end of 1901, U.S. generals fighting in the most recalcitrant regions of the islands had likewise turned to concentration camps. This was simply because the Filipinos had the audacity to claim their freedom not only from Spain, but from foreign domination. The US Army recorded this turn officially as an “orderly application of measured tactics”, but what developed was far from that. On seeing one camp, one senior Army officer wrote, “It seems way out of the world without a sight of the sea, in fact, more like some suburb of hell.”

       By 1900, however, that other “progressive and humane” nation - Great Britain, had instituted camps in South Africa. Aimed at first to control rebellious Dutch-descended settler farmers during the Boer War, they yielded results similar to Spanish (Cuban) and American (Philippines) camps. In 1900,  the British began relocating more than 200,000 civilians, mostly women and children, behind barbed wire into bell tents or improvised huts. Again, the idea of punishing civilians evoked horror among those who saw themselves as representatives of a civilized nation. “When is a war not a war?” asked British Member of Parliament Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in June 1901. His answer?  “When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.” As in Cuba and The Philippines, far more people died in the camps than in combat. Polluted water supplies, lack of food, and infectious diseases ended up killing tens of thousands of detainees. While the reports of the treatment of European descendants in this manner shocked many if not most of the British public, far less concern was evidenced for conditions in British camps for black Africans who had even more squalid living conditions and, at times, only half the rations allotted to white detainees.

        Lest we minimize American use of the concept of forced relocation and physical concentration (because we’re the “good guys”) it is essential to recall the “internment” (concentration) of US citizens of Japanese descent during WW II. Enough has been said about this, so let’s back up to the last half of the 19^th century to another concentration camp, this time on the Lakota Pine Ridge “reservation.”  The difference between reservation and concentration camp at the time was largely a matter of spelling.  The circumstances are largely irrelevant, but the result bears repetition. Approximately 300 men, women, and children of the Lakota were killed and 51 were wounded (4 men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later). While Congress (in 1990) formally apologized and denounced the actions of the US Army, the sickening fact is that 20 Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who received them for actions during the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, when hundreds of Native Americans were killed by U.S. cavalry soldiers. This is the nation’s highest military honor bestowed on men using Hotchkiss machine guns to indiscriminately kill women and children.

Mass grave at wounded knee. Look familiar?

        A concentration camp, by definition, is exactly what the Border Detention Centers are. How bad they are is a matter of degree, not definition.

        By the way the poll results on the original question show, disappointingly, that 78.5% of our countrymen and women apparently don’t know the difference between summer camp and involuntary confinement. Of the Democrats who responded, 61% think the camps are concentration camps, while a disturbing 95 % of Republicans think they’re just fine.