#forced labor camps

[kopykunoichi]

[shes-some-other-where]

“Forget about them.”

Contains: prison/labour camp, angst

Walking from camp to the worksite was as torturous as the labour. Morning air was deceptively cool, the sky painted in luscious sunrise hues. If not for the prisoners’ exhausted grunts and the never-ending rattle of chains, morning might have been a gentle reprieve, imbued with memories of happier times. Family. Home.

When the work began, and whips cracked, and wounds bled, and the sun beat mercilessly down on burnt, unprotected skin, the memories hurt infinitely worse.

Home, family, happiness—buried by agonizing reality.

Forget about them. But he knew the yearning would repeat the next day. And the next. Forever.

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All my writing is original. Feel welcome to interact/comment/reblog. Pls don’t steal or repost.

[solarbird]

Trump's tariffs and mass deportations fit together to create something even worse

I think I’ve squared a circle. Doesn’t mean it’s real; just that I’ve found a way to square it.

Let’s say you’re Trump and you’ve promised mass deportations and huge tariffs on China and other countries.

Now, walk with me:

[fatehbaz]

[T]he infamous Diable (Devil’s Island) [French prison in Guiana, South America] [...]. Seventy thousand convicts were sent to French Guiana between 1852 and 1938. [...] Alongside deportation of political prisoners [...], a [...] convict population [...] was sent to the bagne (common parlance for the penal colony) [...] as a utopian colonial project [...] via the contribution convict labour would make towards colonial development in French Guaina. However, [...] French Guiana [...] was predominantly used as a depository for the unwanted citizens of France and its colonies. The last remaining French and North African convicts were repatriated in 1953, whereas the last Vietnamese prisoners were not given passage home until 1954 [...].

[T]he same form of built environment and carceral technology [...] structures found on Con Dao [French prison in Vietnam] and [the French prison in Guiana] [were] built at almost the same time [...] to house the same convict populations (Vietnamese implicated in anticolonial struggles) [...]. Old world colonialism is thus displaced by new world imperialism. Both rely on the prison island and its cellblocks. [...]

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The carceral continuities [...] throughout France’s penal colonies are supplemented by legal exceptionalism which works to redefine colonial subjects within shifting political contexts. [...] Many of the Indochinois convicts transported to the forest camps of French Guiana in 1931, including the Bagne des annamites, had originally been classed as political prisoners. The transfer was intended in part [...] to remove a number of anticolonial actors from Indochina. [...]

As political deportees sent to French Guiana were usually exempt from labour according to the political decree of 1850, this status had to be revoked to ensure the maximum labour force possible.

Consequently, those arrested on suspicion of specific acts of violence or property damage were reclassed as common criminals. Described by Dedebant and Frémaux (2012, 7) as “little arrangements between governors,” this was not simply a sleight of hand but written into legal codes. [...]

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[M]any of the Vietnamese sent to French Guiana had to wait until the 1960s to be repatriated. [...] After their sentences were completed, convicts were not simply repatriated to France or other colonies.

A system of “doublage” intended to shore up colonial development meant they had to serve the same length of their sentence again on the colony. For those condemned to eight years or more, this became life. Opportunities for sustainable livelihood were limited in a territory possessing swathes of free convict labour. Worn out and sick from their time in the bagne, most of these men were unfit to work and relied on charity to survive. [...]

[T]he last living convict [of the Guiana penal colony] [...] died in Algeria in 2007 after being repatriated to Annaba. In an interview given in 2005, he claims that every night he dreams he is back in Cayenne: “when I think about it, I get vertigo, I spent my life there” [...].

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All text above by: Sophie Fuggle. "From Green Hell to Grey Heritage: Ecologies of Colour in the Penal Colony". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 24 (2022), Issue 6, pages 897-916. Published online 8 April 2021. At: doi dot org slash 10.1080/1369801X.2021.1892507 [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[sportsmodepigeon]

I WAS going to enjoy a glass of red wine this hallowed eve, but as has been pointed out to me: I have fucking class tomorrow for once.

[etakeh]

“We’re going to re-parent people and restore connection to community,” he promised. “We have a whole generation of kids who are dispossessed, they’re alienated, their marginalized, their suicide rates are exploding; the second largest killer for young people is drug addiction.”

All good dude, we are reparenting each other.

A lot of us have a lot of these problems because of people like you. How do you think you're going to be able to fix them with forced labor camps.

You're not my dad, you can't tell me what to do.

[arctic-hands]

Someone else on one of my genealogical groups asked for how to access records on the Service du travail obligatoire, France's slave labor program to Nazi Germany. I've been looking for online access to those records for years since I found my great-grandparents in the Arolsen Archive as forced laborers in Munich. I can't help this person because I still haven't found that resource so I'm throwing it out here, anyone know where I and this other person (whom I am presuming is also American) can find records or other resources?

[rugged11th]

Libo-on di labi

Dancin' the night away

[vampacidic]

what the fuck was that

[oneofthebestcontent]

The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps that operated in the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the 1950s. The system was initially established to imprison and punish political opponents of the Soviet government, but it was expanded to include common criminals and others deemed to be enemies of the state. The conditions in the Gulag camps were notoriously harsh. Prisoners were forced to work long hours in extreme weather conditions, with inadequate food and medical care. Many prisoners died from malnutrition, disease, or exhaustion, and others were executed for various offenses. Watch Full Video and subscribe channel

[shes-some-other-where]

The Merry Whump of May 2024 Masterlist

(in progress)

All my writing is original. Feel welcome to comment, interact, or reblog. Pls don't steal or repost.

Event Order

Contains: prison, prison camp, forced labour, abuse of power

All drabbles, exactly 100 words. All (loosely) connected, but many can be read as standalone pieces. If you'd like to read in chronological order, the suggested reading order is here.

Tumblr stopped allowing me to add links, to this post, so I split the prompts in half. See below:

🌫️ Days 1-15

🌫️ Days 16-31

[ID: a gold medal featuring the words 2024 Completionist, Merry Whump of May. End ID.]

[moonwaif]

People who have actually studied the 100 flowers movement and la guerra sucia and Pinochet and etc etc, how we holding up

[arthrobot]

It has become increasingly difficult as of late to escape the nagging feeling that there is nowhere to turn in which one or more likely several groups are being offered up as living sacrifices to the Great Work of the Cause to which the people in that space have decided to attach themselves. Collective punishment at worst, justified by the inherent badness of "those people whomst are inherently enemies of The Cause" or at best whose suffering is fake, a mirage of "The Enemy" to delegitimize "our side" seems to be the order of the day, and it is genuinely terrifying.

[worldwidebreakingnews]

Discover firsthand accounts of life under forced labour in North Korea. Uncover the harsh reality and learn how you can help make a difference.

[hoodienanami]

how much do you want to bet that this person claims to be a prison abolitionist?

This is about labour camps btw

[lifewithaview]

Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' (2005) Surprising Beginnings

E1

German commanders discover the efficiency of gassing prisoners, and Auschwitz transforms from a small backwater camp for those resisting the Nazi occupation of Poland to a large scale extermination camp for Jews.