Mass internment camps did not begin or end with the Nazis \u2013 today they are everywhere from China to Europe to the US. How can we stop their spread? By Daniel Trilling<\/p>\n
At the start of the 21st century, the following things did not exist. In the US, a large network of purpose-built immigration prisons, some of which are run for profit. In western China, \u201cpolitical education\u201d camps<\/a> designed to hold hundreds of thousands of people, supported by a high-tech surveillance system. In Syria, a prison complex<\/a> dedicated to the torture and mass execution of civilians. In north-east India, a detention centre<\/a> capable of holding 3,000 people who may have lived in the country for decades but are unable to prove they are citizens. In Myanmar, rural encampments<\/a> where thousands of people are being forced to live on the basis of their ethnicity. On small islands and in deserts at the edges of wealthy regions \u2013 Greece\u2019s Aegean islands, the Negev Desert in Israel, the Pacific Ocean near Australia, the southern Mediterranean coastline \u2013 various types of large holding centres for would-be migrants.<\/p>\n The scale and purpose of these places vary considerably, as do the political regimes that have created them, but they share certain things in common. Most were established as temporary or \u201cemergency\u201d measures, but have outgrown their original stated purpose and become seemingly permanent. Most exist thanks to a mix of legal ambiguity \u2013 detention centres operating outside the regular prison system, for instance \u2013 and physical isolation. And most, if not all, have at times been described by their critics as concentration camps.<\/p>\n