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Articles on Prisoners of war

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Thousands of teddy bears with candles on display at a protest in Brussels in February 2023 represented abducted Ukrainian children. Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga MAG/AFP via Getty Images

Prosecuting Putin for abducting Ukrainian children will require a high bar of evidence – and won’t guarantee the children can come back home

The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants for Russians allegedly responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.
Detained: Vjekoslav Prebeg (Croatia), Dylan Healy and John Harding (UK), Mathias Gustafsson (Sweden) and Andrew Hill from Britain, during a court hearing in Donetsk, August 2022. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters/Alamy stock photo

Ukraine war: prisoner swaps have been going on for centuries – here’s how they work

Five British nationals were part of a prisoner swap with Russia recently. Here’s what international law tells us about the detention and treatment of people taken in time of conflict.
The burial of some of the Japanese prisoners of war who lost their lives in the mass outbreak from B Camp, (the Japanese section), at No. 12 Prisoner Of War compound in the early hours of August 5, 1944. Australian War Memorial (073487)

The Cowra breakout: remembering and reflecting on Australia’s biggest prison escape 75 years on

It’s one of the largest prison escapes in world history and it’s through fiction we can understand the tragedy, from both an Australian and Japanese perspective.
Rupert O’Flynn with Rudolf Marcuse’s bronze bust of Douglas Grant, December 2016. Photograph courtesy Tom Murray.

How we tracked down the only known sculpture of a WWI Indigenous soldier

In 1918, in Wünsdorf prisoner-of-war camp, a German sculptor created a bust of Indigenous soldier Douglas Grant. For decades, the whereabouts of this nationally significant sculpture were unknown - until now.
Guantanamo Nay detainees sit in a holding area at Camp X-Ray on Jan. 11, 2002. Reuters/Shane T. McCoy/Handout

5 things to know about Guantanamo Bay on its 115th birthday

On Dec. 10, 1903, the US military leased 45 square miles of Cuban territory to build a naval base. How did Guantanamo Bay become an infamous prison for alleged terrorists?
A display of acrobatics by German internees at the prisoner of war camp at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire in October 1914. Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia

A glimmer of light amidst the darkness: honour in the First World War

During First World War, the rhetoric of chivalry counteracted the inhumanity of the conflict in sometimes surprising ways.
An ex-8th Division prisoner of war is reunited with his family at Ingleburn POW reception camp in New South Wales, November 1945. Ernest McQuillan/Australian War Memorial

Friday essay: ‘It’s not over in the homes’ – impotence, domestic violence and former POWs

Over 20,000 former POWs returned to Australia at the end of the second world war. Archival research sheds light on those who struggled to readjust to life here - and the impact on their wives.
At the United Nations’ prisoner-of-war camp at Pusan, North Korean and Chinese prisoners are assembled in one of the camp compounds. Wkimedia/Larry Gahn/US State Department

North Korean POWs seeking last chance to return home after decades in exile

More than six decades after the Korean War, a small group of North Korean prisoners of war may get a chance to return home.

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