Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing refers to various policies or practices that result in 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. 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 ethnic purification and (in the French versions of some UN documents) nettoyage ethnique and épuration ethnique.Drazen Petrovic, "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology", European Journal of International Law, Vol. No. 3. Retrieved 20 May 2006.

Definitions

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

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.Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing", Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 110, Summer 1993. Retrieved 20 May 2006.

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 ) (notice that literal translation of the phrase is "ethnic cleaning"). 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 territory" (čišćenje terena, IPA ) 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 by the Serbian media 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. "KLA Terror & Ethnic Cleansing", Strategic Issues Research Institute, 22 March 2002. Retrieved 20 May 2006. However, this usage had antecedents.

One usage 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 [... (source). The Ustaše did carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing in Croatia during the Second World War and sometimes used the term "cleansing" to describe it (source).

At the same time, 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. ([http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=3025&reportid=169 source).

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).

Early examples of ethnic cleansing

The Assyrian Empire regularly deported entire ethnic groups, as did the Babylonians; victims of this policy most famously include the Israelites of Israel in 722 BC and the Israelites of Judah in 586 BC (see Babylonian captivity of Judah).

The migration of Caribs led to the displacement of indigenous Arawaks, but they themselves were later defeated and expelled.

Mongols, Turks, and Russians have instigated various forced relocations of other peoples in Eurasia over the centuries.

In some instances, the expulsion of Jews had some features of ethnic cleansing, especially if accompanied by violence and enacted on the whole territory of the state.

Jews were expelled from England (1290), France (1306), Hungary (1349–1360), Provence (1394 and 1490), Austria (1421), Spain after the Reconquista, Portugal (1497), Russia in 1724, and from various parts of Germany at various times. Not all deportations of Jews affected an entire country or lasted for extended periods of time: Jews from Krakow (1494) were expelled to suburbs of the city, and Jews expelled from Lithuania (1491) were allowed to return 10 years later.

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. Rezun, Miron, "Europe's Nightmare: The Struggle for Kosovo", (p. 6), Praeger/Greenwood (2001) ISBN 0275970728 Parker, Geoffrey, "Europe in Crisis", (p. 18), Blackwell Publishing (1979, 2000) ISBN 0631220283 Gadalla, Moustafa, "Egyptian Romany: The Essence of Hispania" (pp. 28-9), Tehuti Research Foundation (2004) ISBN 1931446199

Roma people were expelled from France, England and other European countries during the 16th century.

Gaelic Irish Catholics were expelled from much of the province of Ulster to be replaced with English and Scottish settlers after the Flight of the Earls in 1605, resulting in centuries of sectarian strife leading to the partition of Ireland in 1921. During the time of the English Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell instituted a policy that many historians see as an act of ethnic cleansing through which Cromwell forbade native Irish from owning land in most regions outside of Connaught.

These early examples occurred before modern concepts of "inalienable human rights" became generally accepted in the majority of the burgeoned free world, and thus are insufficient examples of the "horror" of state-admisistered ethnic cleansing in the context of some basic assumptions of inalienable human rights.

Ethnic cleansing in the modern age

Colonial period

During more recent times, ethnic cleansing has often been used during colonisation projects.

The entire history of European colonialism (English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese) in India, Africa, Australia, and North, Central and South America involved varying degrees of subjugation, interference and annihilation of indigenous populations based on invasion of their regions. Ethnic cleansing, however, tends to focus more on the adminstration by a government to eliminate some other culture from within its boundaries of control; in other words, it's not so much about conquering far away lands, but more about removing some stigmatized minority group from within the home land.

The colonization of Australia by Britain. This led to population removals and massacres of the indigenous population, starting in 1788. It is important to note that the Māori were not ethnically cleansed in New Zealand. Many Māori were dispossessed of ownership of their land, but few were ever forcibly removed.

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 JACKSON, William (1990): The Rock of the Gibraltarians. A History of Gibraltar. Gibraltar Books, 2nd edition. Grendon, Northamptonshire, UK. ISBN 0-948466-14-6. General Sir William Jackson was Governor of Gibraltar between 1978 and 1982, a military Historian and former Chairman of the Friends of Gibraltar Heritage.

The expulsion of the Acadian population from Nova Scotia between 1755 and 1763, in what is known as "le Grand Dérangement" ("The Great Upheaval"). After refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown following the 1733 Treaty of Utrecht, the Acadian population was forcibly expelled to various locations, most notably to France and the Thirteen Colonies. (See also: History of the Acadians)

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. 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) Committee on Indian Affairs, US Senate, Cherokee Settlement and Accommodation Agreements Concerning the Navajo and Hopi Land Dispute, (US General Printing Office, 1996)

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.Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, c1995

Expulsion of Muslim populations in Northern Caucasus by imperial Russia throughout 19th century. Particularly, expulsion of Circassians to Anatolia in 1864.McCarthy, ibid.

20th century

The 1913 Convention of Adrianople, annexed to the Peace Treaty between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, provided for an exchange of ethnic Turks and Bulgarians in a 15 kilometer strip.
During First World War Imperial Germany planned to annex territories in the area of Congress Poland and perform ethnic cleansing of Polish and Jewish population followed by settlement of Ethnic Germans ^*http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0192893254/104-0991016-8279914?v=search-inside&keywords=frontier%20strip
The Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Pontian Greeks perpetrated by the Young Turks during 1914–1922.
The 1919 Treaty of Neuilly provided for the reciprocal emigration of ethnic minorities between Greece and Bulgaria.
In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne which ended the First World War in the East, as well as post-war hostilities between Greece and the newly-formed Republic of Turkey, provided for a compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey.
in 1941-1945 the Croatian Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II executed over 400,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma people and others and indirectly caused a hundreds of thousands more exiled, killed etc.
The expulsions of Jews from Austria after the Anschluss, and deportations of Poles and Jews from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany wiped out entire populations of Jews and Roma people and Sinti ("Gypsies") during World War II (see also the Holocaust).Tebbutt, SusanSinti and Roma: Volume 2, pp. 5-7, Berghahn Books (1998) ISBN 1571819223
Generalplan Ost, in which the Nazis planned to kill or expel most or all ethnic Slavs from large regions of Eastern Europe and replace them with German settlers. A part of it was the expulsion of Poles from Zamość County by Germans in 1942-1944.
The German exodus from Eastern Europe and prewar eastern Germany (Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia). Up to 16.5 millions fled, were evacuated or expelled. Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion are from 0.5 million to 3 million.
The exodus of Italian people from Istria and Dalmatia after World War II
The expulsion of Japanese Settlers from Korea and soviet-annexed South-Kuril Islands
Systematic deportations of numerous nationalities in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
The ethnic cleansing of Volhynia by Ukrainian guerrilla groups.
The expulsion of 800,000 Poles from Warsaw, partially to concentration camps, after defeat of Warsaw Uprising 1944. The city of Warsaw, population of one million, was ordered to be completely demolished on the personal order of Hitler. Approximately 80% of the city was demolished (the number includes Warsaw Uprising destructions).
Finns evacuated from Finnish Karelia and other parts occupied by Soviet Union during World War II, leaving behind ethnically clean area. This was voluntary, but they evacuated fearing the Soviet rule and deportations to Siberia that happened in Soviet Union before to many nationalities, including Finns, see Population transfer in the Soviet Union.
Mass expulsions of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India and of Muslims from India, resulting in the killings of Muslims moving from India to Pakistan and of Hindus and Sikhs moving from Pakistan to India, both following the partition of British India in 1947. Talbot, Ian: "India and Pakistan", (pp. 198-99), Oxford University Press (2000) ISBN 0340706325
Since 1947 expulsions of Hindus from both the Pakistani and Indian ruled regions of the disputed territory of Kashmir by Kashmiri militant groups and of Muslim Kashmiris by Indian security forces in the region.
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 forcibly deported by Jewish forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. KIMMERLING, Baruch: ”The Invention And Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military”, (p.40), University of California Press. (2001) . PAPPE, Ilan: “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples”, (pp. 129-36), Cambridge University Press. (2004) ISBN 0521556325 . REINHART, Tanya: ”Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War”, (p. 7), Seven Stories Press. Canada. (2002) ISBN 1583225382.
The flight of Jews from the areas of Palestine occupied by Jordan and Egypt during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The Jewish exodus from Arab lands - Yemen, Morocco and Iraq during 1948-1950, as well as flights which took place over the following 20 years from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other Arab countries.
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).http://www.etan.org/et99b/september/19-25/23unrigh.htmhttp://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/timor/etimor1202bg.htm
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. India, The World Factbook. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
Killing of Kenyans in the 1950s by the UK during the Mau Mau Uprising.
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. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1005064.stmhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1317945,00.html
Displacement of Palestinians from areas occupied by Israel after the Six Day War in 1967, particularly from East Jerusalem. Masalha, Nur: “Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion”, (pp. 224-25), Pluto Press (2000) ISBN 0745316158. Yahni, Sergio: “The Struggle Against Ethnic Cleansing in the South Hebron Region” in News from Within 18, no. 2, (pp. 24-8), (Feb. 2002). Prior, Michael: “Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry”, (pp. 31-3), Routledge (UK), (1999) ISBN 0415204623.
Forced removals of non-white populations in South Africa under Apartheid. Bell, Terry: "Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth", (pp. 63-4), Verso, (2001,2003) ISBN 1859845452 Valentino, Benjamin A., "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century", (p. 189), Cornell University Press, (2004) ISBN 0801439655.
The mass expulsions of Greek Cypriots from northern Cyprus and of Turkish Cypriots from southern Cyprus in 1974-1975.http://mondediplo.com/maps/cyprusmdv49
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.Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, Cherokee The Ethnic Cleansing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, (US General Printing Office, 1992)
The forced displacement of some 800,000 Azeris and 300,000 Armenians during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the Armenian invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas from 1988 to 1994.
The forced displacement of some 200,000 Georgians and other non-Abkhazians from Abkhazia in 1993. Bookman, Milica Zarkovic, "The Demographic Struggle for Power", (p. 131), Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. (UK), (1997) ISBN 0714647322
The 1994 massacres of Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide Leeder, Elaine J., "The Family in Global Perspective: A Gendered Journey", (p. 164-65), Sage Publications, (2004) ISBN 0761928375
Jakarta Riots of May 1998, massacres of Indonesian Chinese who were the scapegoats of the collapse of economy.

21st century

The forced removal of 9000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and Northern West Bank in 2005 as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.Eugene Robinson, "Betrayed in Gaza"; Washington Post, 19 August 2005, Page A21.

Morton A. Klein, "Gaza Withdrawal Rewards Terrorism", The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 27 February 2004. Jeff Jacoby, "Sharon's retreat is a victory for terrorists", Jewish World Review, 1 April 2005.

Attacks by the Janjaweed Arabs, Muslim militias of Sudan on the non-Arab African Muslim population of Darfur, a region of western Sudan. 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 0974819875 .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.

Disputed allegations of ethnic cleansing

The US evacuation and rebuilding policies for predominently African-American New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "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.
Activists on both sides of the 2006 US immigration debate have argued that their opponents' proposals amount to ethnic cleansing."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.

Silent Ethnic Cleansing

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).

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. The large German populations in Czechoslovakia and 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.

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

Ethnic cleansing is designated a crime against humanity in international treaties, such as that which created the International Criminal Court (ICC). The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was set up in a similar spirit, and prosecutes these crimes under more generic names.

The United Nations' General Assembly condemns "ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred in a 1992 resolution ^*.

The emergence of ethnic cleansing as a distinct category of war crime has been a somewhat complex process. Each individual element of a programme of ethnic cleansing could be considered as an individual violation of humanitarian law - a killing here, a house-burning there - thus missing the systematic way in which such violations were perpetrated with a single aim in mind. International courts therefore consider individual incidents in the light of a possible pattern of ethnic cleansing. In the Yugoslav case, for instance, the ICTY considers the widespread massacres and abuses of human rights in Bosnia and Kosovo as part of an overall "joint criminal enterprise" to carve out ethnically pure states in the region.

However, many alleged "ethnic cleansings" in the past do not fit the modern definition of "crimes against humanity." For example, the post-WW2 German expulsions were sanctioned by the international agreement at Potsdam conference, requiring that the actions proceed humanely.

Notes

References

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

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