Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.[The danger of overstretching the term can be avoided...The goal of ethnic cleansing is to permanently remove a group from the area it inhabits...There is a popular dimension to ethnic cleansing because there are people needed to threaten with violence, to evict homes, organize mass transports, and to prevent the return of the unwanted...The main goal of ethnic cleansing was the removal of a group from a certain territory The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History. (2012). United Kingdom: OUP Oxford.][ or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide.]
Although scholars do not agree on which events constitute ethnic cleansing,
Ethnic cleansing has no legal definition under international criminal law, but the methods by which it is carried out are considered crimes against humanity and may also fall under the Genocide Convention.
Etymology
An antecedent to the term is the Greek word andrapodismos (ἀνδραποδισμός; lit. "enslavement"), which was used in ancient texts. e.g., to describe atrocities that accompanied Alexander the Great's conquest of Thebes in 335 Common Era.
In the early 1900s, regional variants of the term could be found among the Czechs (očista), the Poles (czystki etniczne), the French (épuration) and the Germans (Säuberung).
During the Holocaust in World War II, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of ensuring that Europe was "cleaned of Jews" (judenrein).[Allen, Tim, and Jean Seaton, eds. The media of conflict: War reporting and representations of ethnic violence. Zed Books, 1999. p. 152][Cox, Caroline.
]
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Nagorno Karabakh: Forgotten People in a Forgotten War." Contemporary Review 270 (1997): 8–13: "These operations were part of a policy designated `Operation Ring, comprising the proposed ethnic cleansing (a word used in relation to Azerbaijan's policy before it became familiar to the world in the context of the former Yugoslavia) of all Armenians from their ancient homeland of Karabakh." It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War (1992–1995).
In 1992, the German equivalent of ethnic cleansing (, ) was named German Un-word of the Year by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache due to its euphemistic, inappropriate nature.
Definitions
The Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 defined ethnic cleansing as:
The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group."[Hayden, Robert M. (1996) "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers" . Slavic Review 55 (4), 727–48.] As a category, ethnic cleansing encompasses a continuum or spectrum of policies. In the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "ethnic 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 a population from a given territory."[Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing" , Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 110, Summer 1993. Retrieved May 20, 2006.]
Terry Martin has defined ethnic cleansing as "the forcible removal of an ethnically defined population from a given territory" and as "occupying the central part of a continuum between genocide on one end and nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration on the other end."[Martin, Terry (1998). "The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing" . The Journal of Modern History 70 (4), 813–861. pg. 822]
Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, has criticised the rise of the term and its use for events that he feels should be called "genocide": because "ethnic cleansing" has no legal definition, its media use can detract attention from events that should be prosecuted as genocide.[Douglas Singleterry (April 2010), "Ethnic Cleansing and Genocidal Intent: A Failure of Judicial Interpretation?", Genocide Studies and Prevention 5, 1] Ethnic cleansing has therefore and for being read as euphemistic alternatively identified as ethnocide or cultural genocide.
As a crime under international law
There is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing;[ "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court" , Article 7; Updated Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia , Article 5.] The gross human rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under public international law of crimes against humanity and in certain circumstances genocide.[ Timothy V. Waters, "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing" , Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law. Retrieved on 2006, 12–13]
Mutual ethnic cleansing
Mutual ethnic cleansing occurs when two groups commit ethnic cleansing against minority members of the other group within their own territories. For instance in the 1920s, Turkey expelled its Greek minority and Greece expelled its Turkish minority following the Greco-Turkish War.
Causes
According to Michael Mann, in The Dark Side of Democracy (2004), murderous ethnic cleansing is strongly related to the creation of democracies. He argues that murderous ethnic cleansing is due to the rise of nationalism, which associates citizenship with a specific ethnic group. Democracy, therefore, is tied to ethnic and national forms of exclusion. Nevertheless, it is not democratic states that are more prone to commit ethnic cleansing, because minorities tend to have constitutional guarantees. Neither are stable authoritarian regimes (except the nazi and communist regimes) which are likely perpetrators of murderous ethnic cleansing, but those regimes that are in process of democratization. Ethnic hostility appears where ethnicity overshadows social classes as the primordial system of social stratification. Usually, in deeply divided societies, categories such as class and ethnicity are deeply intertwined, and when an ethnic group is seen as oppressor or exploitative of the other, serious ethnic conflict can develop. Michael Mann holds that when two ethnic groups claim sovereignty over the same territory and can feel threatened, their differences can lead to severe grievances and danger of ethnic cleansing. The perpetration of murderous ethnic cleansing tends to occur in unstable geopolitical environments and in contexts of war. As ethnic cleansing requires high levels of organisation and is usually directed by states or other authoritative powers, perpetrators are usually state powers or institutions with some coherence and capacity, not failed states as it is generally perceived. The perpetrator powers tend to get support by core constituencies that favour combinations of nationalism, statism, and violence.[[8] , Mann, Michael (2005), The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Ch. 1 "The Argument," pp. 1–33.]
Ethnic cleansing was prevalent during the Age of Nationalism in Europe (19th and 20th centuries).
Genocide
Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and methods (e.g., forced displacement), ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.[Ethnic cleansing versus genocide:
]
Some academics consider genocide to be a subset of "murderous ethnic cleansing".[Shaw, Martin (2015b), What is Genocide, Polity Press, ISBN 978-0-7456-8706-3 ‘Cleansing’ and genocide.]
As a military, political, and economic tactic
The foibe massacres (; ; ), or simply "the foibe", refers to ethnic cleansing, mass killings and deportations both during and immediately after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the Italian Empire of Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia, against local Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) and Slavs, primarily members of fascist and collaborationist forces, and civilians opposed to the new Yugoslav authorities,
The resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 9th and 7th centuries BC is considered by some scholars to be one of the first cases of ethnic cleansing.
During the 1980s, in Lebanon, ethnic cleansing was common during all phases of the conflict, notable incidents were seen in the early phase of the war, such as the Damour massacre, the Karantina massacre, the Siege of the Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp, and during the 1982 Lebanon War such as the Sabra and Shatila Massacre committed by Lebanese Maronite forces backed by Israel against Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shia civilians. After the Israeli withdrawal from the Chouf, the Mountain War broke out, where ethnic cleansings (mostly in the form of tit-for-tat killings) occurred. During that time, the Syrian backed, mostly Druze dominated People's Liberation Army used a policy they called "territorial cleansing" to "drain" the Chouf of Maronite Christians in order to deny them of resisting the advance of the PSP. As a result, 163,670 Christian villagers were displaced due to these operations. In response to these massacres, the Lebanese Forces conducted a similar policy, which resulted in 20,000 Druze displaced.
Ethnic cleansing was a common phenomenon in the wars in Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This entailed intimidation, forced expulsion, or Murder of the unwanted ethnic group as well as the destruction of the places of worship, cemeteries and cultural and historical buildings of that ethnic group in order to alter the population composition of an area in the favour of another ethnic group which would become the majority.
According to numerous ICTY verdicts and indictments, Serb
Survivors of the ethnic cleansing were left severely traumatized as a consequence of this campaign.
Israeli herders have engaged in a systemic displacement of Palestinian herders in Area C of the West Bank as a form of nationalist and economic warfare.
When enforced as part of a political settlement, as happened with the expulsion of Germans after World War II through the forced resettlement of ethnic Germans to Germany in its reduced borders after 1945, the forced population movements, constituting a type of ethnic cleansing, may contribute to long-term stability of a post-conflict nation.[Judt, Tony (2005). Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Press.] Some justifications may be made as to why the targeted group will be moved in the conflict resolution stages, as in the case of the ethnic Germans, some individuals of the large German population in Czechoslovakia and prewar Poland had encouraged Nazi jingoism before World War II, but this was forcibly resolved.
According to historian Norman Naimark, during an ethnic cleansing process, there may be destruction of physical symbols of the victims including , books, monuments, graveyards, and street names: "Ethnic cleansing involves not only the forced deportation of entire nations but the eradication of the memory of their presence."
Instances
See also
Explanatory notes
Notes
Further reading
External links
