Talk:Boven-Digoel concentration camp

Requested move 27 June 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 16:40, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

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Boven-Digoel → Boven-Digoel concentration camp – The current article title is not fully descriptive of the fact that this was a prison camp. Part of the problem is that in most printed sources in English, Indonesian etc the camp is simply referred to as "Boven-Digoel" or even just "Digoel". But here we are trying to communicate what the article is about to an audience that may know nothing. There is also a geographic region with the same name Boven Digoel Regency so it's not a unique name. I would be OK with Boven-Digoel prison camp or Boven-Digoel internment camp, but the google results seem to give many more hits on concentration camp, possibly because that is the terminology used on WorldCat. Dan Carkner (talk) 14:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• The term "concentration camp" to most people is emotive and implies Nazi-type horrors, and were conditions anything anything like that in Bovel-Digoel?? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I can't determine your reaction to a phrase, but currently the definition on Wikipedia and naming conventions for such camps seems to be very ambiguous and inconisistent. I went with the one that had 10-100 times as many google hits as the other options. It fits the classic definition of a concentration camp as a remote camp where large numbers of people not charged with crimes were interned. Health conditions were not good (jungle setting, poor diet and living conditions) but it was not a mass extermination camp like the Nazi camps you may be thinking of. Internment camp could also be used, but maybe Prison camp is less appropriate since almost all prisoners had not been charged and tried.--Dan Carkner (talk) 22:29, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

If it helps clarify at all I found a source https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5728/indonesia.95.0047 that notes that the Dutch themselves referred to Boven-Digoel as a concentration camp until 1940 when they changed it because of the Nazi usage.Dan Carkner (talk) 14:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support I agree the current title is insufficiently descriptive. "Concentration camp" is, to me, a reasonably neutral and factual description, so I'm fine with the move as proposed. Lennart97 (talk) 18:59, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Governor-general Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff

There should be some reference to Andries de Graeff as the governor-general who, after the major communist uprisings of 1926/1927, used his 'exorbitant rights' to detain communists without a trial. This is important, because although the Dutch government in The Hague supported setting up this camp for political prisoners (and pressured the governor-general to maintain order), it was the colonial government in Batavia (Jakarta) that took the initiative. 2001:1C02:1990:A900:A9CA:248D:64D9:616D (talk) 07:56, 29 March 2023 (UTC)