Alabor camp (orlabour camp, seespelling differences) orwork camp is a detention facility where inmates areforced to engage inpenal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects withslavery and withprisons (especiallyprison farms). Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators. Convention no. 105 of the United NationsInternational Labour Organization (ILO), adopted internationally on 27 June 1957, intended to abolish 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 criminalsper se, but political opponents (real or imagined) and various so-called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes.
TheAllies of World War II operated a number of work camps after the war. At theYalta Conference in 1945, it was agreed that Germanforced labor was to be utilized as reparations. The majority of the camps were in theSoviet 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] SeeForced 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" forcompulsory military service, and were conscripted to labour battalions (Czech:Pomocné technické prapory (PTP)) instead.[citation needed]
DuringWorld War II theNazis operated several categories ofArbeitslager (Labor Camps) for different categories of inmates. The largest number of them held Jewish civilians forcibly abducted in the occupied countries (seeŁapanka) 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 orprisoners of war.[13]
During the early 20th century, theEmpire of Japan used the forced labor of millions of civilians from conquered countries and prisoners of war, especially during theSecond Sino-Japanese War and thePacific War, on projects such as theDeath 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 for political criminals (Kwan-li-so). The total number of prisoners in these colonies is 150,000 to 200,000. Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea, the defendant and his/or her family are incarcerated for life in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact.[14]
Imperial Russia operated a system of remoteSiberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system, calledkatorga.
TheSoviet Union took over the already extensive katorga system and expanded it immensely, eventually organizing theGulag to run the camps. In 1954, a year after Stalin's death, the new Soviet government ofNikita 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 ofcorrective labor colonies. Officially, the Gulag was terminated by theMVD order 20 of January 25, 1960.[15]
During the period ofStalinism, theGulag labor camps in theSoviet 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 capturedbesprizorniki (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 theSwedish state duringWorld War II. The majority of internees werecommunists, but radicalsocial democrats,syndicalists,anarchists,trade unionists,anti-fascists and other "unreliable elements" of Swedish society, as well asGerman dissidents and deserters from theWehrmacht, 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 thethird cabinet ofPer Albin Hansson, agrand coalition which included all parties represented in the SwedishRiksdag, with the notable exception of theCommunist Party of Sweden.
After the war, many former camp inmates had difficulty finding a job, since they had been branded as "subversive elements".[16]
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 onreeducation through labor. However, penal labor allegedly continues to exist in Xinjiang internment camps.[22][23][24][25][26]
North Korea is known to operate six camps with prison-labor colonies for political criminals (Kwan-li-so). The total number of prisoners in these colonies is 150,000 – 200,000. Once condemned as a political criminal in North Korea, the defendant and their families are incarcerated for lifetime in one of the camps without trial, and are cut off from all outside contact.[14]
In 1997, aUnited States Army document was developed that "provides guidance on establishing prison camps on [US] Army installations."[27]
The United States makes use of forced penal labour in its prison system, through collaboration with companies such as Whole Foods, McDonald's, Target, IBM, and more.[28]
^Gibson, Mary; Poerio, Ilaria (2018). "Modern Europe, 1750–1950". In Anderson, Clare (ed.).A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. Bloomsbury Publishing.ISBN978-1350000698. Retrieved2019-10-07.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 (2nd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press (published 2010). p. 185.ISBN978-1442698796. Retrieved2019-10-07.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.ISBN978-0807130353. Retrieved2019-10-07.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
^General History of Africa, Albert Adu Boahen, Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa, p. 196, 1990
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