Labor camp

A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons. Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators.

During the reign of Stalinism, labor camps in the Soviet Union were officially called "Corrective labor camps." The term labor colony; more exactly, "Corrective labor colony", (исправительно-трудовая колония, ИТК), was also in use and referred to camps that housed prisoners with shorter average sentences.

Notable labor camps

• Colonial Plantations in the Caribbean were a system of off-shore forced labor camps that were used to enslave kidnapped Africans and accumulate riches for European monarchs, merchants, institutions and aristocrats from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Although camp inmates were designated 'slaves', the majority were kidnap victims, prisoners of war or penal deportees. The death rate on the Codrington estate, (owned by the Church of England's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts) was not unusual, with one quarter (25%) of all enslaved Africans dying within three years of their arrival. Caribbean labour camps were noted for their brutal punishments, racial oppression, family destruction and systemized rape by camp guards and overseers. Designation as a 'slave' meant African inmates endured a life sentence with very little possibility of release. African women who give birth, witnessed their children forced to endure the same life sentence. A comparitvely small number of European penal deportees were also sentenced to serve in Caribbean and South American labour camps for periods ranging from 5 years to life. It is estimated that 4 million Africans were sent to Caribbean labor camps, about 14% of whom died during the trans-Atlantic crossing. Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Denmark all operated Caribbean labor camps.

• Imperial Russia operated a system of remote Siberian forced labor camps as part of its regular judicial system, called katorga.

• Soviet Russia 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 dissolved. Officially, the Gulag was terminated by the MVD order 20 of January 25, 1960.

• 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 crimes.

• During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager for different categories of inmates. The largest number of them held civilians forcably 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

The Nazis 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 Mittelbau-Dora labor camp complex that serviced the production of the V-2 rocket. See List of German concentration camps for more.

• The Allies of World War II operated a number of work camps after the war. In the Yalta conference 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 1,000,000 Germans were forced to work in French coal-mines and British agriculture, as well as 500,000 in U.S. run Military Labor Service Units in occupied Germany itself.

• The Communist Party of China has operated many labor camps for some types of crimes. Many leaders of China were put into labor camps after purges, including Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. As a matter of fact, hundreds - if not thousands - of labor camps and forced-labor prisons (laogai) still exist in modern day China, housing political prisoners and dissidents alongside dangerous criminals.

• In Communist Romania, labor camps were operated for projects such as the building of the Danube-Black Sea Canal and the desiccation of the Great Brăila Island, on which "enemies of the people" were "re-educated" by forced labor. Between 1949 and 1953, forty to sixty thousand prisoners were held in labor camps along the Canal at any given time. Most of the people that worked on such projects never got out alive.

• In the former state of North Vietnam, labor camps were widespread. During the Vietnam War labor camps were used extensively by the communist government for its war effort. After the war and reunification in 1975, the victorious North sent thousands of South Vietnamese citizens and military officers into labor camps. This act served three purposes: (1) To punish the Western collaborators. (2) To help rebuild the nation. (3) To reeducate them with communist ideals. These camps, however, no longer appear to exist in present day Vietnam. Due to the economic, political, and social reforms the country has been experiencing, political prisoners are far less common.

See also

• Extermination through labour
• Civilian Inmate Labor Program