By ICSC staff, with contributions from Japanese American National Museum and Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas.
Growing attention has been given to the opening of a detention center in Florida, USA. The detention center, officially named Alligator Alcatraz, has garnered reports of hasty construction, inhumane conditions and the diverting of crucial disaster preparedness and response resources for its commissioning. Against the backdrop of ongoing anti-immigrant policies, increased numbers of deportations and detention, and the foregoing of due processes and humanitarian protections, Alligator Alcatraz is just one part of a cautionary tale that points how the steady erosion of democratic norms and diminished political freedoms becomes normalized, baselessly criminalizing migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons seeking safety. Sites of Conscience are critically positioned to illuminate the history of migrant scapegoating and highlight the ways that communities and individuals are detained to fulfill political agendas. Sites of Conscience such as The Japanese American National Museum (USA) and Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas (Chile) are two among many Sites of Conscience, that serve as indicators for early warning, sharing lessons about the ways that we can respond, protect and advocate for groups being targeted and detained.
Across the globe, authoritarianism is on the rise, accompanied by a troubling securitization1 and misleading interpretations of concepts like security, peace or justice – concepts that are used to justify social control, imposed stability, and the elimination of dissent. One of the most visible and alarming consequences of this trend is the expansion of mass incarceration. Today, an estimated 11.5 million people are held in penal institutions worldwide2 with the US leading3 and holding nearly two million people behind bars4. But these figures only scratch the surface. When we include other forms of confinement and control of movement, such as migrant detention centers, or refugee camps that resemble open-air prisons, it becomes clear that vast segments of the global population are living under conditions of extreme surveillance, restricted movement, and systemic rights violations. According to the Immigrant Justice Center in the United States, “the conditions of these detention facilities are inhumane and human-rights abusing; from medical negligence to punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of due process, preventable deaths, and discriminatory and racist treatment.”5 Far from being exceptions, these abuses reflect a broader systemic pattern that mirrors the logic of authoritarian control, even within democratic societies globally.
The Japanese American National Museum tells this history, with first-person testimonies of incarcerees and their descendants telling the story of the mass incarceration of 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Ann Burroughs, President and CEO of JANM, explains that
“While fighting authoritarianism and fascism abroad, the US still, without due process, subjected an enormous number of its people to forced removal and unjust imprisonment based solely on their ethnicity. Decades of racist policies like Alien Land Laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act helped create an atmosphere where America’s concentration camps were widely accepted.”
Image credit: Japanese American National Museum via Facebook
Reflecting on this historical period and its current pertinence, Burroughs noted “We know all too well the devastating consequences of such actions – families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, and the trauma inflicted on a community for generations.” For JANM, the parallels between current state-sanctioned responses and the history it works to preserve are stark, with racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism operating under the guise of national security and immigration enforcement.
It is clear that oppressive regimes worldwide have long relied on incarceration as instruments of political control and social engineering. Marta Cisterna Flores, Executive Director of Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas described how in Chile, during the Pinochet civil-military dictatorship (1973 – 1990) all sort of facilities were transformed into centers of kidnapping torture and extermination to persecute all opposed to the regime- including their site. She underlined how in the present “the legacy of these practices is manifested in the normalization of institutional violence, prison overcrowding and the persistence of torture” noting how prison continues to be used as a selective punishment in modern societies, “especially affecting those living in poverty and, in the case of Chile, indigenous populations”.
To learn and heal from these legacies and pursue justice for victims, former sites of incarceration around the world have been transformed into spaces of remembrance and education, humanizing the experiences of detainees through first-hand testimonies, highlighting for the public the stakes when human rights are not upheld, and moving from passive commemoration of the past to an active engagement with the root causes of human rights violations. As Cisterna explained
“We are not talking about ‘faceless numbers’, but about concrete people with stories, families and dreams cut short(…). We firmly believe that Sites of Memory are a warning tool against the normalization of new forms of authoritarianism”.
Image credit: Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas
Burroughs expands on the notion “The great power of JANM has been the first-person testimonies (…) For example, young people in America’s concentration camps tried to enjoy music and dancing and a social life while behind barbed wire, and it is not a stretch for today’s students to see the letters and photos and imagine themselves in that very real situation.”
As part of their memory and atrocity prevention work, Casa Memoria José Domingo Cañas exercises human rights oversight of the Chilean state, actively monitoring government and law enforcement responses to protests and demonstrations, ensuring that the state upholds its obligation to prevent the repetition of past abuses. As Executive Director Marta Cisterna puts it: “Memory is not only remembrance: it is an active tool for prevention, advocacy, and transformation”. As a call to action, Burroughs expressed “It is imperative that JANM and the many sites of the incarceration insist on pointing out the parallels and serve as a warning. We must call the concentration camp that was built in Florida a concentration camp, and remind the public that it is not the first concentration camp to be built in this country. Our history gives us not only the right, but the responsibility, to speak out.”
As we consider these lessons, we must ask ourselves: What patterns from history are we seeing repeated today? How am I located in this? Am I a silent bystander or am I actively supporting this? How can I speak out? What actions can I take?
If you want to learn on the topic, check out our podcast episode on militarization, authoritarianism, and how it is also disproportionately affecting women. The episode features a conversation with Shirley Gunn, founder and director of the Human Rights Media Centre in South Africa, who amplifies the voices of survivors of state violence during and after apartheid and Fatna El Bouih, Moroccan activist and writer, whose experiences as a political prisoner drive her fight for justice, dignity, and women’s empowerment.
Footnotes
- The process where a political issue is framed as an existential threat, justifying the use of extraordinary measures and potentially bypassing normal political processes
↩︎ - https://www.icpr.org.uk/news/2024/prison-populations-continue-rise-many-parts-world-115-million-held-prisons-worldwide ↩︎
- https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html ↩︎
- https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/ ↩︎
- https://immigrantjustice.org/es/research/policy-brief-snapshot-of-ice-detention-inhumane-conditions-and-alarming-expansion/ ↩︎