As promised, in light of the WaPo report of Everglades camp detainees being swarmed by mosquitoes in the shower and unable to sleep at night due to being bitten, I want to briefly address concentration camp history and mosquitoes. I won't be comprehensive but will give a few examples. [1/17] One thing to keep in mind is that building in the Everglades was a deliberate choice. The administration wanted a punitive, dangerous camp. The shoddy, temporary facilities (at far above permanent-facility per-bed costs) exacerbate the conditions. Mosquitoes apparently have free rein. [2/17] Another thing to know is that mosquitoes are brutal in Florida. The state has a long history of lethal illnesses spread by mosquitoes. No one in government is unaware of the constant battle and treatments that have worked to keep mosquitoes at bay in an incredibly inhospitable climate. [3/17] Mosquitoes have likewise long had a starring role in concentration camps around the world, starting with the first reconcentrados in Cuba in the 1890s. Forcing families out of the countryside and behind barbed wire was *meant* to punish civilians by depriving them of food and shelter. [4/17] With reconcentrados surrounded by standing water in overcrowded and unsanitary settings, mosquito-borne malaria became a leading cause of death. Encephalitis deaths were also common. More than 100,000 civilians died in squalid conditions in these camps, from hunger and disease. [5/17] In the Philippines soon afterward, the U.S. set up its first overseas concentration camps. Mosquito-borne malaria surged among detainees. As one soldier wrote: "Now this little spot of black sogginess is a reconcentrado pen, with a dead-line outside, beyond which everything living is shot..." [6/17] "Upon arrival I found 30 cases of small-pox and average fresh ones of five a day, which practically have to be turned out to die. At nightfall clouds of huge vampire bats softly swirl out on their orgies over the dead. Mosquitoes work in relays, and keep up their pestering, day and night." [7/17] It's possible some degree of unknowing negligence with specific regard to mosquitoes reigned when Spain imposed reconcentración on Cuba, as scientists were just establishing a direct link between mosquitoes and malaria in those years. But in the 1920s, the USSR would weaponize the insect. [8/17] Both Emma Goldman and Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about the mosquito torture of the early Gulag, in which people were forced to stay outside naked, to allow mosquitoes to feed on them unimpeded. Here's Goldman denouncing the Bolsheviks in 1925. [9/17]
Mosquitoes as deliberate torture caught on elsewhere. In Cuba when UMAP camps were imposed under Castro, "Jehovah Witnesses were subject to all manner of cruel treatment: beaten; deprived of food, water... tied up naked outside and left for the mosquitoes and sun." [10/17] In Chinese concentration camps, mosquitoes were also used to administer punishments that would not violate official rules against assaulting camp prisoners. There are several examples, but here's part of the testimony Liu Xinhu gave before Congress in 1995. [11/17]
Australia outsourced immigration detention in 2001 to the nation of Nauru and to Manus in PNG, to create a punitive disincentive around migration. Manus had staggering malaria rates, and the mosquito-borne dengue outbreak at the detention facility in Nauru in 2014 was entirely foreseeable: [12/17]
These are just a few examples of the role mosquitoes have played in past concentration camp detention systems. And to be clear, I'm not saying that Trump or DeSantis has been reading Gulag or Chinese history in their spare time and trying to repeat it. [13/17] But I am arguing that a desire to abuse civilians in ways that leave no one accountable leads to the nasty locations in which so many camps have been sited across history. The Everglades camp location was embraced in part due to the punishment that mosquitoes will provide. [14/17] The WaPo reports Yale professor emeritus of epidemiology Durland Fish as saying, “The risk of mosquito-borne disease at this site is significant.” Viruses he detected during a mosquito study conducted in the area of the detention center can cause neurological damage, including encephalitis. [15/17]
www.washingtonpost.com
Here is a perfect example of the cruelty inherent in this kind of camp, even when it's not a death factory. No one is machine-gunning or gassing detainees. But if we keep human beings in a dangerous setting, with facilities optimized to put them at risk, the camp itself will harm them. [16/17] From the 1890s to 2025, mosquitoes have been both a bug and a feature in concentration camps. Unlike leaders during reconcentración, however, the officials funding, building, and running today's camps know the exact role that these insects play not just in discomfort, but in disease and death. [FIN] PS - If this thread is useful to you, and you'd like to read more things like it, you can always support my writing by subscribing to my newsletter, Degenerate Art.
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