French regroupment camps caused severe physiological deterioration among Algerians

Evidence

One million hostages behind barbed wires, and now the French themselves sound the alarm: “Medication no longer has any effect on these regrouped people, so great is their physiological deterioration.” What then? Colonialism is fighting to strengthen its domination and human and economic exploitation. It is fighting also to maintain the identity of the image it has of the Algerian and the depreciated image that the Algerian had of himself. Well, this has long since become impossible. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 100 (#expands, via linked claim)

By July 1959 over one million Muslim villagers had been transferred to “re-groupment camps”, which varied from resembling the fortified villages of the Middle Ages to the concentration camps of a more recent past. In the latter conditions were nothing short of scandalous. Hunger first, and cold secondly, were the enemies. At one camp just outside Constantine, inmates were found eating grass in the field, and in the overcrowded, tented encampments for nomads of the south infants were often found dead of cold in the mornings. Tuberculosis and other ailments of malnutrition raged. Of one regrouped Kabyle village, designed for 3,000 but now holding 15,000, Jules Roy wrote: “As for leaving—at the gates of the village there is a garrison, barbed wire, an armed sentry, and trenches. And where is there to go? The land has been burned. A few onions are sprouting at the bottom of the wadis.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1021 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Regroupment camps produced physiological deterioration severe enough to defeat medication; France regrouped a million Algerians to sever the army from the people — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 99; Algerian women regrouped in camps turned displacement into revolutionary political organization (+8 more)

Related

• Regroupment camps produced physiological deterioration severe enough to defeat medication (similarity 0.98)
• The regroupment policy displaced over a million Algerian villagers into camps with scandalous conditions. (similarity 0.94)
• Regroupment camps held a million Algerians in dead-of-cold, starvation conditions. (similarity 0.93)
• Regrouped Algerians deteriorated physiologically to the point that medication stopped working. (similarity 0.92)
• French regroupement policy relocated over a million Algerian peasants into guarded camps. (similarity 0.92)
• Regroupment camps interned over a million Algerian villagers in squalid conditions (similarity 0.91)
• France regrouped a million Algerians to sever the army from the people (similarity 0.86)
• Pacification devastated rural Algerian demographics, leaving eight women per two men (similarity 0.82)
• Regroupment camps won militarily but drove Algerians into F.L.N. ranks (similarity 0.81)
• Regroupement bred resistance even as it hampered the A.L.N. militarily. (similarity 0.80)
• Forced evacuation of mechtas restructured Algerian perceptual and social reality (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Regrouped Algerians deteriorated physiologically to the point that medication stopped working. #expands (0.90) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 100
• Regroupment camps interned over a million Algerian villagers in squalid conditions #corroborates (0.80) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1021
• The regroupment policy displaced over a million Algerian villagers into camps with scandalous conditions. #corroborates (0.80)
• Demographic pressure rather than French presence produced Algerian misery #contradicts (0.70) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 346