The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Internment

in international law the compulsory detention of foreign citizens by warring or neutral states during a time of armed conflict. Internees are settled in a defined locality which they are forbidden to leave. Internment of foreign civilians is distinguished from the internment of foreign military personnel.

Internment applies mainly in relation to civilians of one of the warring sides in permanent or temporary residence on the territory of the other warring side. Military personnel falling into the hands of the enemy are not internees but prisoners of war. Internment of enemy troops can take place only during an armistice, when military action and consequently the taking of prisoners cease.

Also subject to internment are military personnel of the warring sides arriving on the territory of a neutral state. Interned military personnel are disarmed and subjected to restrictions to prevent them from leaving the territory of the neutral state and resuming military activities. The neutral state supplies the internees with food and clothing and extends other services to them, which gives it the right to compensation after the end of hostilities.

Questions of internment were regulated by various clauses of the Geneva Convention of 1929. The Geneva Convention of 1949—Protection of the Civilian Population in Time of War— regulates in detail the status of foreign citizens and specifies that the place of internment must be outside the zone of military activities and, when possible, be designated by special markings. Internees are supported free of cost by the warring sides (they are supplied with such essentials as food, clothing, and medical help), and they have the right to correspond with relatives and with appropriate international organizations.

During World War II, fascist Germany brutally flouted the norms of international law on internment (for example, with regard to the right of asylum). Also in violation of international law was the internment by Anglo-American occupation authorities of Soviet citizens who had been forcibly transported by the Hitlerites to Germany and other European countries.

V. I. KUZNETSOV

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References in periodicals archive

In 1942 Nino La Civita was internee N.2607 in the Central Internment Camp, Italian Wing N.3.

Being Italian in British India in 1940: Father Luca and the artist Nino La Civita

He observed that these internment centers were established under the Regulations Act 2012 and now these were run by civil administration of KPK and not by the Army.

SC issues notices in pleas questioning powers under Civil Administration Regulations

A Tragedy of Democracy is a remarkably well-written, extensively researched, and innovatively reasoned history of internment. Robinson is careful not to draw direct conclusions about current wartime internment policy, but the similarities are evident.

A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America

Western Jews and Japanese Removal during World War II, offers a different kind of intervention in the history of Japanese American relocation and internment. Her meticulous and impeccably researched book documents the Jewish

Placing Memory: a Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment

Whereas earlier commercial films tell the internment story through the eyes of sympathetic whites, using a conventional civil rights template found in films like Mississippi Burning (10) and To Kill A Mockingbird, (11) Japanese and other Asian American documentary filmmakers construct their Japanese characters as model minorities--hyper-citizens, super patriots.

Outsider citizens: film narratives about the internment of Japanese Americans

The petitioner prayed the court to declare unconstitutional establishment of internment centres in Fata and Pata under the Action (in aid of civil power) Regulation (AACPR), 2011, and order the government to hand over all internees to the relevant courts for trial.

Comments sought in petition against legislation for former Fata, Pata

soil or abroad and whether it was a Muslim or not, I hear this constant refrain in my life: 'Go home, you terrorists.'" In Internment, Ahmed continues to explore this racism as Layla faces daily threats and violence inside Camp Mobius, where life is highly regimented and families are forced to live in cramped trailers in the desert heat of California.

Who gets to feel at home in America? YA author Samira Ahmed talks about her chilling work of speculative fiction

"It is no longer a secret that more than one million Uighur Turks incurring arbitrary arrests are subjected to torture and political brainwashing in internment camps and prisons," Aksoy said.

Turkey calls on China to close internment camps for Muslims

From 1914-1920, immigrants to Canada from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany were considered enemy aliens and imprisoned in internment camps under harsh conditions.

The Stories Were Not Told: Canada's First World War Internment Camps

ISLAMABAD:The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances on Tuesday submitted a monthly report to a special bench of the Supreme Court, in which it shared that 36 missing persons had been traced in September, of which 13 are facing detainment in different internment centres.

36 missing persons traced in September: MPC report