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Ethnic cleansing refers to various policies or practices aimed at the displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory. The term entered English and international usage in the early 1990s to describe certain events in the former Yugoslavia, with the induced cleansing of Bosniaks ("Bosnian Muslims"). The term became known to the world as Serbian war overheads most of the time either openly discussed or indicated their plans in cleansing (čišćenje) of territories. Narrower definitions equate ethnic cleansing with forcible population transfer accompanied by gross human-rights violations and other factors. In broader definitions it is effectively a synonym of population transfer.

Synonyms include sectarian revenge and ethnic purification and (in the French versions of some UN documents) nettoyage ethnique and épuration ethnique.

Definitions

The term ethnic cleansing has been variously defined. In the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff:

thnic cleansing defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an "undesirable" population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.

Drazen Petrovic has distinguished between broad and narrow definitions. Broader definitions focus on the fact of expulsion based on ethnic criteria, while narrower definitions include additional criteria: for example, that expulsions are systematic, illegal, involve gross human-rights abuses, or are connected with an ongoing internal or international war. According to Petrovic:

thnic cleansing is a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory on the basis of religious, ethnic or national origin. Such a policy involves violence and is very often connected with military operations. It is to be achieved by all possible means, from discrimination to extermination, and entails violations of human rights and international humanitarian law."

Origins of the term

The term "ethnic cleansing" entered the English lexicon as a loan translation of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian phrase etničko čišćenje (IPA /etnitʃko tʃiʃtʃʲeɲe/). During the 1990s it was used extensively by the media in the former Yugoslavia in relation to the Yugoslav wars, and appears to have been popularised by the international media some time around 1992. The term may have originated some time before the 1990s in the military doctrine of the former Yugoslav People's Army, which spoke of "cleansing the field" (čišćenje terena, IPA /tʃiʃtʃʲeɲe terena/) of enemies to take total control of a conquered area. The origins of this doctrine are unclear, but may have been a legacy of the Partizan era.

This originally applied purely to military enemies, but came to be applied to ethnic groups as well. It was used in this context in Yugoslavia as early as 1981, in relation to the policies of the Kosovo Albanian administration creating an "ethnically clean" territory (i.e. "cleanly" Albanian) in the province. However, this usage had antecedents.

One of the earliest usages of the term cleansing can be found on May 16, 1941, during the Second World War, by one Viktor Gutić, a commander in the Croatian fascist faction, the Ustaše: Every Croat who today solicits for our enemies not only is not a good Croat, but also an opponent and disrupter of the prearranged, well-calculated plan for cleansing our Croatia of unwanted elements . The Ustaše did carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide in Croatia during the Second World War and sometimes used the term "cleansing" to describe it.

Some time later, on 30 June, 1941, the lawyer Stevan Moljević from Banja Luka, the main ideologue of the Serbian nationalist organization, the Chetniks, and Mihailović’s most trusted confidant, published a booklet with the title On Our State and Its Borders. Moljević assessed the circumstances in the following manner: One must take the opportunity of the war conditions and at a suitable moment take hold of the territory marked on the map, cleanse it before anybody notices and with strong battalions occupy the key places (...) and the territory surrounding these cities, freed of non-Serb elements. The guilty must be promptly punished and the others deported - the Croats to Croatia, the Muslims to Turkey or perhaps Albania - while the vacated territory is settled with Serb refugees now located in Serbia.

The term "cleansing" ("cleansing of borders", очистка границ) was used in Soviet documents of early 1930s in reference to the resettlement of Poles from the 22-km border zone in Byelorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR. The process was repeated on a larger and wider scale in 1939-1941, see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union and Population transfer in the Soviet Union.

A similar term with the same intent was used by the Nazi administration in Germany under Adolf Hitler. When an area under Nazi control had its entire Jewish population removed, whether by driving the population out, by deportation to Concentration Camps, and/or murder, the area was declared judenrein, (lit. "Jew Clean"): "cleansed of Jews".(cf. racial hygiene). (refer to Robert Brinkman aka b dub's novel "ethnic cleansing"

Ethnic cleansing as a military and political tactic

The purpose of ethnic cleansing is to remove the conditions for potential and actual opposition, whether political, terrorist, guerrilla or military, by physically removing any potentially or actually hostile ethnic communities. Although it has sometimes been motivated by a doctrine that claim an ethnic group is literally "unclean" (as in the case of the Jews of medieval Europe), more usually it has been a rational (if brutal) way of ensuring that total control can be asserted over an area. The campaign in Bosnia in early 1992 was a case in point. The tactic was used by Croatian, Muslim Bosnian and Serbian forces. Ethnic cleansing is often also accompanied by efforts to eradicate all physical traces of the expelled ethnic group, such as by the destruction of cultural artifacts, religious sites and physical records.

As a tactic, ethnic cleansing has a number of significant advantages and disadvantages. It enables a force to eliminate civilian support for resistance by eliminating the civilians — in a reversal of Mao Zedong's dictum that guerrillas among a civilian population are fish in water, it drains the water. When enforced as part of a political settlement, as happened with the forced resettlement of ethnic Germans to Germany after 1945, it can contribute to long-term stability. Some individuals of the large German population in Czechoslovakia and prewar Poland had been sources of friction before the Second World War, but this was forcibly resolved. It thus establishes "facts on the ground" - radical demographic changes which can be very hard to reverse. But this does not concern the treatment of the inhabitants of Historical Eastern Germany.

On the other hand, ethnic cleansing is such a brutal tactic and so often accompanied by large-scale bloodshed that it is widely reviled. It is generally regarded as lying somewhere between population transfers and genocide on a scale of odiousness, and is treated by international law as a war crime.

Ethnic cleansing as a crime under international law

There is no formal legal definition of ethnic cleansing. However, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense - the forcible deportation of a population - is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The gross human-rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under the definitions for genocide or crimes against humanity of the statutes.

The UN Commission of Experts (established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780) held that the practices associated with ethnic cleansing "constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes. Furthermore ... such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention." The UN General Assembly condemned "ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred in a 1992 resolution.

Silent Ethnic Cleansing

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Silent ethnic cleansing is a term coined in the mid-1990s by some observers of the Yugoslav wars. Apparently concerned with Western-media representations of atrocities committed in the conflict — which generally focused on those perpetrated by the Serbs — atrocities committed against Serbs were dubbed "silent", on the grounds that they were not receiving adequate coverage.

Since that time, the term has been used by other ethnically oriented groups for situations that they perceive to be similar — examples include both sides in Northern Ireland's continuing troubles, and those who object to the expulsion of ethnic Germans from former German territories during and after World War II.

Some observers, however, assert that the term should only be used to denote population changes that do not occur as the result of overt violent action, or at least not from more or less organized aggression - the absence of such stressors being the very factor that makes it "silent" (although some form of coercion must logically exist).

Instances of ethnic cleansing

Early instances

• The St. Brice's Day massacre of all Danes living in England on the orders of the Anglo-Saxon king Ethelred the Unready.
• The Edict of Expulsion, given by Edward I of England in 1290, exiled the Jews from England for 350 years.
• The Alhambra decree, issued by Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31, 1492.
• Spain's large Muslim minority, inherited from that country's former Islamic kingdoms, was expelled in 1502, while Muslim converts to Christianity, called Moriscos, were expelled between 1609 and 1614.

Colonial period

• Expulsion of Acadians by British between 1755 and 1763.

• The invasion of Gibraltar by Britain in 1704 led to an ethnic cleansing of the local Andalusian population, who were expelled from the territory in 1704

• In the United States in the 19th century there were numerous instances of relocation of Native American peoples from their traditional areas to often remote reservations elsewhere in the country, particularly in the Indian Removal policy of the 1830s. The Trail of Tears, which led to the deaths of about 2,000 to 8,000 Cherokees from disease, and the Long Walk of the Navajo are well-known examples.

• Expulsion of Turkish, Muslim, and Jewish populations from Balkans following the independence of Balkan countries (e.g., Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria) from Ottoman Empire from early 1800s to early 1900.

• Expulsion of Muslim populations in Northern Caucasus by imperial Russia throughout 19th century. Particularly, expulsion of Circassians to Anatolia in 1864. (see Muhajir (Caucasus) for more details)

20th century

• The Armenian Genocide and the Pontian Greek Genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks during 1914–1922.
• The Assyrian genocide also perpetrated by the Young Turks in collaboration with the Kurdish people between 1915 and 1918.
• The persecutions and expulsions of Jews in Germany, Austria and other Nazi-controlled areas prior to the initiation of mass genocide in 1941.
• Nazi Germany wiped out entire populations of Jews, Roma people and Sinti ("Gypsies") during World War II (see also the Holocaust).
• Genocide and ethnic cleansing by Hungarian, German and Croatian Axis troops against Serb, Jewish and Roma civilians in Vojvodina province of Serbia between 1941 and 1944 (See: Crimes of the occupiers in Vojvodina, 1941-1944).
• Killings by Yugoslav communist partizans against ethnic Hungarians and Germans in Vojvodina province of Serbia in 1944-1945 (See: 1944-1945 Killings in Bačka).
• Kalmyk deportations of 1944 in which the entire population of Kalmykia was transported to Siberia by the Soviets.
• Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II. (Effected 1945-1948, affected up to 16.5 million, casualties 1 - 3 Million)
• Direct Action Day, in which Hindus were massacred as part of the Muslim League's demands for an independent Pakistan.
• Mass expulsions of Muslims from India to Pakistan. Mass expulsions of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India. This was to create an Islamic state in an area which was historically related to the origins of Hinduism and Sikhism. The controversy surrounding this move resulted in the killings of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in riots. This was known as the partition of British India in 1947.
• The Nakba or Palestinian exodus, in which the substantial majority of Palestinians (approximately 700,000) in the areas of Palestine that became part of Israel fled or were deported by Israeli forces during the Arab invasion igniting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
• Jewish exodus from Arab lands, in which the substantial majority of Jews (approximately 800,000) from Arab countries fled or were deported by Arab governments between the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Six Day War in 1967. The major populations affected were in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
• The mass deportation of ethnic minorities from their homelands, including East Timor and Papua, by the Indonesian government, beginning with Indonesian independence in 1949 (and subsequent occupation and annexation of Papua until the present day and of East Timor until 1999).
• Displacement of Kashmiri Hindus living in Kashmir due to the ongoing and anti-Indian insurgency. Some 500,000 Hindus have been internally displaced from Kashmir due to the violence.
• The removal of the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago (including Diego Garcia) by the United Kingdom and United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
• In 1966, tens of thousands of Igbos were murdered in northern Nigeria, which led to the headlong flight back to the Eastern Region of as many as two million Igbo. The southeastern region of Nigeria seceeded and became Biafra. However, a 3 year long war which led to the killing of about a million Igbos forced Biafra to surrender. Many children died of starvation because of a blockade.
• Displacement of Palestinians (Jordanian citizens) from areas captured by Israel after the Six Day War in 1967, particularly from East Jerusalem.
• Forced removals of non-white populations in South Africa under Apartheid.
• The mass expulsions of Greek Cypriots from northern Cyprus and of Turkish Cypriots from southern Cyprus in 1974-1975.
• Massacre of 3000 tamils and diaspora of over half a million in Sri Lanka
• Islamic Revolution of Iran prompted the exodus of the majority of non-Muslims in Iran. This included many Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, and Christians (most ethnic Armenians), all of whom had been persecuted for centuries. Discrimination had greatly relaxed under the Pahlavi dynasty, until the revolution. The Jews are especially known to have been forced to leave vast amounts of property upon emigrating, which has subsequently been confiscated by government officials. In 1979, there had been 80,000 Jews dispersed in Iran; in 2000, there are an estimated 25,000 (many of whom plan to emigrate). The Iranian diaspora has largely been absorbed by the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Turkey, Israel, and elsewhere.
• The widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1999, of which the most significant examples occurred in eastern Croatia and Krajina (1991-1995), in most of Bosnia (1992-1995), and in the Albanian-dominated breakaway Kosovo province (of Serbia) (1999). Large numbers of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians were forced to flee their homes and expelled.
• The forced displacement of some 200,000 Georgians and other non-Abkhazians from Abkhazia in 1993.
• The 1994 massacres of Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide
• The mass expulsion of southern Lhotshampas (Bhutanese of Nepalese origin) by the northern Druk majority of Bhutan in 1990. The number of refugees is approximately 103,000.

21st century

• Attacks by the Janjaweed Arabs, Muslim militias of Sudan on the non-Arab African Muslim population of Darfur, a region of western Sudan.
• The removal of 9000 illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip and Northern West Bank in 2005 through the implementation of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. Highly disputed as an ethnic cleansing on the grounds it was by the settlers own government.
• The US evacuation and rebuilding policies for predominently African-American New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• Activists on both sides of the 2006 US immigration debate have argued that their opponents' proposals amount to ethnic cleansing.

See also

• Ethnocide
• Population transfer
• Civilian casualties, civilian, non-combatant persons killed or injured by direct military action
• Command responsibility
• Crime against humanity
• Ethnic Cleansing, a computer game.
• Persecution_of_Hindus

Notes

1. Drazen Petrovic, "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology", European Journal of International Law, Vol. No. 3. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
2. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing", Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 110, Summer 1993. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
3. Petrovic, "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology", op. cit.
4. Marvine Howe in the New York Times (July 12, 1981), quoting an Albanian official in Kosovo
5. Pavelicpapers.com
6. Pavelicpapers.com
7. The Moljevic Memorandum
8. Ward Ferdinandusse, [http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol15/No5/9.pdf The Interaction of National and International Approaches in the Repression of International Crimes], The European Journal of International Law Vol. 15 no.5 (2004), p. 1042, note 7.
9. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7; Updated Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Article 5.
10. Daphna Shraga and Ralph Zacklin "The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia", The European Journal of International Law Vol. 15 no.3 (2004).
11. A/RES/47/80 ""Ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred" United Nations. 12/16/1992. Retrieved on 2006, 09-03
12. England. The Expulsion. (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906 ed.)
13. Spain. Spain. Edict of Expulsion. (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906 ed.)
14. Rezun, Miron, "Europe's Nightmare: The Struggle for Kosovo", (p. 6), Praeger/Greenwood (2001) ISBN 0-275-97072-8; Parker, Geoffrey, "Europe in Crisis", (p. 18), Blackwell Publishing (1979, 2000) ISBN 0-631-22028-3; Gadalla, Moustafa, "Egyptian Romany: The Essence of Hispania" (pp. 28-9), Tehuti Research Foundation (2004) ISBN 1-931446-19-9
15. JACKSON, William (1990): The Rock of the Gibraltarians. A History of Gibraltar. Gibraltar Books, 2nd edition. Grendon, Northamptonshire, UK. ISBN . General Sir William Jackson was Governor of Gibraltar between 1978 and 1982, a military Historian and former Chairman of the Friends of Gibraltar Heritage.
16. Perdue, Theda, Cherokee Women and the Trail of Tears in American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500-1850, p. 526, (Routledge (UK), 2000)
17. Committee on Indian Affairs, US Senate, Cherokee Settlement and Accommodation Agreements Concerning the Navajo and Hopi Land Dispute, (US General Printing Office, 1996)
18. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, c1995
19. McCarthy, ibid.
20. Norman M. Naimark. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN . See also review by Nick Baron, H-Genocide, March 2004.
21. Naimark, op. cit.
22. Tebbutt, Susan: Sinti and Roma: Volume 2, pp. 5-7, Berghahn Books (1998) ISBN 1-57181-922-3
23. Ivanovic, Ilija: Witness to Jasenovac's Hell, pp 185-190, Dallas Publishing Company (2002) ISBN 0-912011-60-2
24. Talbot, Ian: "India and Pakistan", (pp. 198-99), Oxford University Press (2000) ISBN 0-340-70632-5
25. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. (2004) ISBN 0521009677
26. Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Sussex Academic Press. (2005) ISBN 1845190750
27. Ilan Pappe, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld. (2006) ISBN 1851684670
28. Itamar Levin, Locked Doors: The Seizure of Jewish Property in Arab Countries. Praeger/Greenwood. (2001) ISBN 0275971341
29. Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries. (1977) ASIN B0006EGL5I
30. Malka Hillel Schulewitz, The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands. London. (2001) ISBN 0-8264-4764-3
31. http://www.etan.org/et99b/september/19-25/23unrigh.htm
32. http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/timor/etimor1202bg.htm
33. India, The World Factbook. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
34. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1005064.stm
35. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1317945,00.html
36. Nur Masalha, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion, pp. 224-25, Pluto Press (2000) ISBN 0-7453-1615-8
37. Yahni, Sergio: “The Struggle Against Ethnic Cleansing in the South Hebron Region,” News from Within, Feb. 2002, pp. 24-8.
38. Bell, Terry: "Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth", (pp. 63-4), Verso, (2001, 2003) ISBN 1-85984-545-2
39. Valentino, Benjamin A., "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century", (p. 189), Cornell University Press, (2004) ISBN 0-8014-3965-5.
40. http://mondediplo.com/maps/cyprusmdv49
41. Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, The Ethnic Cleansing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, (US General Printing Office, 1992)
42. Bookman, Milica Zarkovic, "The Demographic Struggle for Power", (p. 131), Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. (UK), (1997) ISBN 0-7146-4732-2
43. Leeder, Elaine J., "The Family in Global Perspective: A Gendered Journey", (p. 164-65), Sage Publications, (2004) ISBN 0-7619-2837-5
44. Voice of America (18 October 2006)
45. UNHCR Publication (State of the world refugees)
46. Collins, Robert O., "Civil Wars and Revolution in the Sudan: Essays on the Sudan, Southern Sudan, and Darfur, 1962-2004 ", (p. 156), Tsehai Publishers (US), (2005) ISBN 0-9748198-7-5 .
47. Power, Samantha "Dying in Darfur: Can the ethnic cleansing in Sudan be stopped?", The New Yorker, 30 August 2004. Human Rights Watch, "Q & A: Crisis in Darfur" (web site, retrieved 24 May 2006). Hilary Andersson, "Ethnic cleansing blights Sudan", BBC News, 27 May 2004.
48. Robinson, Eugene. "Betrayed in Gaza", Washington Post, August 19, 2005.
49. Klein, Morton A. "Gaza Withdrawal Rewards Terrorism", The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles February 27, 2004.
50. Jacoby, Jeff. "Sharon's retreat is a victory for terrorists", Jewish World Review, April 1, 2005.
51. Gross, Tom. Exodus From Gaza Tom Gross Mid-East Media Analysis. Retrieved November 4, 2006.
52. "This is turning into the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans", Guardian Unlimited, 24 September 2005. Retrieved 20 May 2006. "Katrina; relocation or ethnic cleansing?", Global Research, 10 September 2005. Retrieved 20 May 2006. "In New Orleans: Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-Style", Mother Jones, 25 October 2005. Retrieved 20 May 2006. "Hurricane Victims Demand More Help", The Washington Post, 9 February 2006. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
53. "U.S Immigration Policy Means Ethnic Cleansing of Euro-Americans, CoCC Meeting Told", Canada First Immigration Reform Committee (website, accessed 24 May 2006). Pro-immigration usage ascribed to La Tierra Es De Todos, an advocacy group; see John Perazzo, "Borders=Ethnic Cleansing?", FrontPage Magazine, 30 August 2005.

References

• Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew (1993). "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing". Foreign Affairs. 72 (3): 110.
• Petrovic, Drazen (1994). "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology". European Journal of International Law. 5 (1): 359.

External links

• Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide
• Photojournalist's Account - Images of ethnic cleansing in Sudan
• Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka

• Forced migration
• Human rights abuses
• Persecution
• Violence
• Ethnic conflict