MORE U.S. WAR CRIMES - PRISONER MASSACRE IN AFGHANISTAN

Concentration Camps in the USA ?

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Just because it has not happened, does not mean that it can not happen at
some time in the future.

The term 'concentration camp' was coined by the British to define the
collecting of Boers into contralled groups during the Boer War. Health care was
abysmal at best and starvation rampant.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Hello Dan,

(B2431) wrote


Just because it has not happened, does not mean that it can not happen at
some time in the future.

The term 'concentration camp' was coined by the British to define the
collecting of Boers into contralled groups during the Boer War.

Yes, the term "concentration camp" is British; but concentration camps
themselves pre-date the Second Anglo-Boer War.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/sec...esofthewar.asp
http://www.bartleby.com/65/sp/SpanAmWar.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0861237.html
http://aolsvc.aol.factmonster.com/ce.../A0861237.html


"Causes of the War

Demands by Cuban patriots for independence from Spanish rule made
U.S. intervention in Cuba a paramount issue in the relations between
the United States and Spain from the 1870s to 1898. Sympathy for the
Cuban insurgents ran high in America, especially after the savage
Ten Years War (1868-78) and the unsuccessful revolt of 1895. After
efforts to quell guerrilla activity had failed, the Spanish military
commander, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, instituted the reconcentrado,
or concentration camp, system in 1896; Cuba's rural population was
forcibly confined to centrally located garrison towns, where thousands
died from disease, starvation, and exposure."

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/reconcentrado.htm

The Spanish speak Spanish, rather than English, and this
means they have different names for things. Their camps in Cuba
(1896) were called 'Reconcentration camps' or 'reconcentrados'.
However, the process was one of concentration, as in the later
Boer War, not reconcentration. The Cuban civilians were in a
dispersed condition in the Cuban countryside, and then they were
collected and imprisoned in camps. The camp at Havana killed
50,000 people, more than all the Boer War camps put together.

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagld003.php
This URL quotes Senator Redfield Proctor in Clara Barton's
book "Concentration Camps of Cuba 1895-1898". 1895 is well
before the Second Anglo Boer War.

Health care was
abysmal at best and starvation rampant.

I agree with your comments about health care, but not the
starvation bit.

Oh yes, it would, and there's no shortage of people who
claim we did exactly that, however:

THE GREAT ANGLO-BOER WAR Byron Farwell ISBN 0-393-30659-3, page 400:

"The army treated the inmates as thought they were so many soldiers. The
rations issued were those served out to regular soldiers in garrison"

"In the concentration camps the food was neither good nor plentiful,
and certainly did not make for a balanced diet. Still, no-one died of
starvation."

Malnutrition, not starvation. The camps were well-supplied
with food, as the demonstration before the Ladies Committee
at Bloemfontein shows. The Boer women threw meat on the ground
in front of the Committee as a sign of rebellion.

"Women threw large portions, which had been newly served out, of
good though thin meat, into the wide roadway of the camp. It
would have made very good broth or stew."

"They lived in a way that used to make the brutal soldier's mouth water
when he came into town after trekking. Our food in the Mounted Infantry
was generally good enough, but we never had shelter.... These persecuted
people, however, were living in cool, roomy marquees and were paid for
doing things for themselves. Thus if they wanted an oven to bake their
bread in the men made one and got paid for it."

ISBN 0-393-30659-3

Standing Orders to the superintendents of the Transvaal camps-

"There must be no stinting in the distribution of medical comforts
to the sick and convalscent, old and infirm people and young children.
When necessary, stimulants may be freely given under doctor's orders.
There must be an adequate supply of milk, which should be liberally
applied to children and deserving people, as well as the sick and
convalescent."

ibid, page 407.

"Medical stimulants supplied at XXXXXXXXX camps in Oct 1901

Champagne 32 bottles
Brandy 171 bottles
Port wine 73 bottles

Claret 29 bottles
Stout 19 bottles
Whiskey 19 bottles

"In spite of all the champagne, brandy, whiskey, and tinned milk,
the children continued to die. Typhoid killed one in five inmates who
came down with it; pneumonia one in three. Between 1st Sept 1901
and the end of the year, one person out of every ten died."

"the Boers in the camps were certainly given enough to eat. The
problem was that their diet was deficient in essential vitamins. This
was an age that knew little about community resistance to disease, still
less about nutrition and virtually nothing about vitamins."

"The rations issued were those served out to regular soldiers in
garrison, but what the uncomplaining Tommies meekly accepted the Boer
civilians complained of bitterly--with good reason. Ater the war
Kitchener
said, "I consider that the soldier was better fed than in any previous
campaign" but civilian politicians had not realised how bad the food was
they served to soldiers. For the first time it occurred to those in
authority that the rations of the British army were excreable.

"People in institutions, particularly when they have little to do,
always complain about the food, even when it is good. In the
concentration
camps the food was neither good nor plentiful, and certainly did not make
for a balanced diet[2]. Still, no-one died from starvation. The amount
of food issued varied from camp to camp; in the Transvaal and in Natal
the meat ration was usually four pounds per adult per week; in the Orange
Free State it was three and a half pounds per week. When Milner took over
the camps he ensured the diet was more varied"

The catastrophe is inherent in bringing people with a nomadic lifestyle
and have therefore had little contact with illness together in stressful
conditions. So, while its an effective technique for suppressing
popular insurrection it has the unfortunate side-effect that its lethal,
and Nicolau Weyler, Jake Smith and Kitchener found out.


Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired