Ethnic cleansing

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Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a local majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory.^[1] The term entered English and international media usage in the early 1990s to describe war events in the former Yugoslavia.

Synonyms include ethnic purification.^[2]

Contents 1 Definitions 2 Origins of the term 3 Ethnic cleansing as a military and political tactic 4 Ethnic cleansing as a crime under international law 5 Silent ethnic cleansing 6 Instances of ethnic cleansing 6.1 In early modern history 6.2 20th century 6.3 21st century 7 See also 8 References 8.1 Bibliography 8.2 Notes 9 External links

Definitions

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

[E]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 a population from a given territory.^[3]

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"^[4]

However, ethnic cleansing rarely aims at complete ethnic homogeneity. The common practice is the removal of stigmatized ethnic groups, and thus can be defined as "the forcible removal of an ethnically defined population from a given territory", occupying the middle part of a somewhat fuzzy continuum between nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration and genocide.^[5]

In reviewing the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Bosnian Genocide Case in the judgement of Jorgic v. Germany on 12 July 2007 the European Court of Human Rights selectively quoted from the ICJ ruling on the Bosnian Genocide Case to explain that ethnic cleansing was not enough on its own to establish that a genocide had occurred:

The term 'ethnic cleansing' has frequently been employed to refer to the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina which are the subject of this case ... General Assembly resolution 47/121 referred in its Preamble to 'the abhorrent policy of 'ethnic cleansing', which is a form of genocide', as being carried on in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ... It [i.e. ethnic cleansing] can only be a form of genocide within the meaning of the [Genocide] Convention, if it corresponds to or falls within one of the categories of acts prohibited by Article II of the Convention. Neither the intent, as a matter of policy, to render an area “ethnically homogeneous”, nor the operations that may be carried out to implement such policy, can as such be designated as genocide: the intent that characterizes genocide is “to destroy, in whole or in part” a particular group, and deportation or displacement of the members of a group, even if effected by force, is not necessarily equivalent to destruction of that group, nor is such destruction an automatic consequence of the displacement. This is not to say that acts described as 'ethnic cleansing' may never constitute genocide, if they are such as to be characterized as, for example, 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part', contrary to Article II, paragraph (c), of the Convention, provided such action is carried out with the necessary specific intent (dolus specialis), that is to say with a view to the destruction of the group, as distinct from its removal from the region. As the ICTY has observed, while 'there are obvious similarities between a genocidal policy and the policy commonly known as 'ethnic cleansing' ' (Krstić, IT-98-33-T, Trial Chamber Judgment, 2 August 2001, para. 562), yet '[a] clear distinction must be drawn between physical destruction and mere dissolution of a group. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide.

– ECHR quoting the ICJ^[6]

Origins of the term

The term "ethnic cleansing" entered the English lexicon as a loan translation of the Serbo-Croatian phrase etničko čišćenje (pronounced [ětnitʃkoː tʃîʃtɕeːɲe]) and has become synonymous with the term genocide.^[7]

During the 1990s it was used extensively by the media in the former Yugoslavia in relation to the Croatian War of Independence, since Serb paramilitary forces and JNA engaged in forcible removal of Croats and other non-Serbs from areas of Croatia occupied by rebel Serbs. Rebel Serbs and JNA have committed widespread and systematic acts of persecution (murder, violence, detention, intimidation) against non-Serb population creating a such coercive atmosphere, atmosphere of fear, that targeted population had no option but to flee or to be deported by force. These acts were carried out from at least August 1991. The displacement of non-Serb population which followed these attacks was not merely the consequence of military action, but in fact its primary objective.^[8]

The term 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, [tʃîʃtɕeːɲe terěːna]) 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.

A Carnegie Endowment report on the Balkan Wars in 1914 points out that village-burning and ethnic cleansing have traditionally accompanied Balkan wars, regardless of ethnicities involved. In probably the earliest attestation of the term, Vuk Karadžić makes use of the word cleanse to describe what happened to the Turks in Belgrade when the city was captured by the Karadjordje's forces in 1806.^[9] Konstantin Nenadović wrote in his biography of famous Serbian leader published in 1883 that after the fighting "the Serbs, in their bitterness (after 500 years of Turkish occupation), slit the throats of the Turks everywhere they found them, sparing neither the wounded, nor the woman, nor the Turkish children".^[10]

Later attestation of the term cleansing can be found on 16 May 1941, during the Second World War, by one Viktor Gutić, a commander in the Croatian extremist 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 [čišćenje] our Croatia of unwanted elements [...].^{[11][unreliable source?]} The Ustaše carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide of Serbs in Croatia during the Second World War and sometimes used the term "cleansing" to describe it.^[12].

Some time later, on 30 June 1941, Stevan Moljević, a lawyer from Banja Luka who was an ideologue of the Chetniks, 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 [očistiti] 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 (significantly amputated) Croatia, the Muslims to Turkey or perhaps Albania - while the vacated territory is settled with Serb refugees now located in Serbia.^{[13][unreliable source?]}

The term "cleansing", more specifically the Russian term "cleansing of borders", ochistka granits (очистка границ), was used in Soviet Union documents of the 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, involving many other ethnicities with cross-border ties to foreign nation-states, see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union and Population transfer in the Soviet Union.^[5]

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).

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, 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.

Ethnic cleansing was a common phenomenon in the Bosnian war. This typically entailed intimidation, forced expulsion and/or killing of the undesired ethnic group as well as the destruction or removal of the physical vestiges of the ethnic group, such as places of worship, cemeteries and cultural and historical buildings. According to numerous ICTY verdicts, Serb^[14] and Croat^[15] forces performed ethnic cleansing of their territories planned by their political leadership in order to create ethnically pure states (Republika Srpska and Herzeg-Bosnia). Furthermore, Serb forces committed genocide in Srebrenica at the end of the war.^[16]

Based on the evidence of numerous Croat forces attacks against Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), the ICTY Trial Chamber concluded in the Kordić and Čerkez case that by April 1993 Croat leadership from Bosnia and Herzegovina had a common design or plan conceived and executed to ethnically cleanse Bosniaks from the Lašva Valley in Central Bosnia. Dario Kordić, as the local political leader, was found to be the planner and instigator of this plan.^[17]

In 1993, during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, armed Abkhaz separatist insurgency, confronted with large population of ethnic Georgians, implemented a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Georgians (Georgians formed the single largest ethnic group in pre-war Abkhazia, with a 45.7% plurality as of 1989) of Abkhazia.^[18] As the results, more than 250,000 ethnic Georgians were forced to flee and approximately 30,000 people were killed during separate incidents involving massacres and expulsion. (See Ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia)^[19][20] This was recognized as ethnic cleansing by OSCE conventions and was also mentioned in UN General Assembly Resolution GA/10708.^[21]

As a tactic, ethnic cleansing has a number of significant impacts. It enables a force to eliminate civilian support for resistance by eliminating the civilians — recognizing Mao Zedong's dictum that guerrillas among a civilian population are fish in water, it removes the fish by draining the water. When enforced as part of a political settlement, as happened with the forced resettlement of ethnic Germans to the new Germany after 1945, it can contribute to long-term stability.^[22] Some individuals of the large German population in Czechoslovakia and prewar Poland had encouraged Nazi jingoism before the Second World War, but this was forcibly resolved^[23]. It thus establishes "facts on the ground" - radical demographic changes which can be very hard to reverse.

For the most part, 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.^[24] 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).^[25] 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.^[26]

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.^[27]

There are however situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, where ethnic cleansing has taken place without legal redress. Timothy V. Waters argues that if similar circumstances arise in the future, this precedent would allow the ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.^[28]

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.^[29]

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 Ireland's recent conflict, 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 is still used.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire in an open letter to President Barack Obama in May 2009, compared Israeli administrative policies in the occupied territories since the Six Days War in 1967 to ethnic cleansing. ^[30]

Instances of ethnic cleansing

This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (May 2009)

This section lists incidents that have been termed "ethnic cleansing" by some academic or legal experts. Not all experts agree on every case; nor do all the claims necessarily follow definitions given in this article. Where claims of ethnic cleansing originate from non-experts (e.g., journalists or politicians) this is noted.

In early modern history

• After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Act of Settlement in 1652, the whole post-war Cromwellian settlement of Ireland has been characterised by historians such as Mark Levene and Alan Axelrod as ethnic cleansing, in that it sought to remove Irish Catholics from the eastern part of the country, others such as the historical writer Tim Pat Coogan have describe the actions of Cromwell and his subordinates as genocide.^[31]

20th century

• The Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Don Cossacks during the Russian Civil War, in 1919-1920.^{[32][Need quotation on talk to verify]}

• The German government's persecutions and expulsions of Jews in Germany, Austria and other Nazi-controlled areas prior to the initiation of mass genocide. Estimated number of those who died in the process is approximately 6 million Jews.^{[33][Need quotation on talk to verify]}

• During WWII, in Kosovo & Metohija, some 10,000 Serbs lost their lives^[34][35], and about 80^[34] to 100,000^[34][36] or more^[35] were ethnically cleansed.^[36]

• Deportation of Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays and Meskhetian Turks by Soviet Union to Central Asia and Siberia, 1943-1944.^[37]

• The ethnic cleansing of Hungarians, or the massacres in Bačka by titoist partisans during the winter of 1944-45, about 40.000 massacred.^{[38][Need quotation on talk to verify]}

• The ethnic cleansing of Cham Albanians from Southern Epirus by Greeks which took place in 1944 and 1945, circa 18,000-35,000^{[39][Need quotation on talk to verify]} fled to Albania, and from several hundred to 2,800 killed.

• During Axis occupation in Albania (1943-1944), Albanian collaborationist organization Balli Kombëtar with Nazi German support mounted a major offensive in southern Albania (Northern Epirus) with devastating results: over 200 Greek populated towns and villages were burned or destroyed, 2,000 ethnic Greeks were killed, 5,000 imprisoned and 2,000 taken hostages to concentration camps. Moreover, 30,000 people had to find refuge in nearby Greece during and after that period.^{[40][41][Need quotation on talk to verify]}

• At the end of World War II many Germans were expelled from eastern Europe, it is described as ethic cleansing by Thomas Kamusella, which he links to the development of ethnic nationalism in central and eastern Europe. Piotr Pikle describes the expulsion of Germans at the end of World War II from Czechoslovakia as ethnic cleansing, and Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees describe the simultaneous expulsion of Germans from Poland as ethnic cleansing.^[42]

• Istrian exodus during and after World War II. The diaspora of Italians from Istria, Rijeka from Zadar, after the collapse of Italian fascist regime and the annexation of the region to Yugoslavia.^{[43][44][45][46]}

• The Palestinian exodus, in which the substantial majority of Arab Palestinians (approximately 700,000) in the areas of British Mandate of Palestine that became part of Israel fled or were forced to leave in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.^[47][48][49] The circumstances of these events are still hotly debated among historians and commentators of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

• Between the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Six Day War in 1967, there was a Jewish exodus from Arab lands, in which 99 percent of Sephardic Jews (approximately 800,000 people) left Arab countries of North Africa and the Mediterranean. Many migrated to Israel; others to the United States and Europe. The major populations affected were in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.^{[50][51][52][53][54]}

• After the Republic of Indonesia achieved independence from the Netherlands in 1949, around 300.000 people, predominantly Indos or Dutch Indonesians (people of mixed Indonesian and European descent), fled or were expelled.^[55]

• Kashmiris who have fled the Indian military action in Kashmir, have migrated to Pakistan, as well as to Great Britain, Canada and the USA.^[56]

• In the aftermath of the 1949 Durban Riots (an inter-racial conflict between Zulus and Asians in South Africa), hundreds of Indians fled Cato Manor.^[57]

• On 5 and 6 September 1955 the Istanbul Pogrom or "Septembrianá"/"Σεπτεμβριανά", secretly backed by the Turkish government, was launched against the Greek population of Constantinople. The mob also attacked some Jews and Armenians of the city. The event contributed greatly to the gradual extinction of the Greek minority in the city and country, which numbered 100,000 in 1924 after the Turko-Greek population exchange treaty. By 2007 there were only 5000 Greeks. The Turkish government further forced expulsion of the Greek minority in the Imbros and Tenedos islands in the period 1923-1993.^{[citation needed]}

• Between 1957-1962 President Nasser of Egypt carried out an Aati-European policy, which resulted in the expulsion of 100-200,000 Greeks from Alexandria and the rest of Egypt. Many other Europeans were expelled, such as Italians and French.^{[citation needed]}

• On 5 July 1960, five days after the Congo gained independence from Belgium, the Force Publique garrison near Léopoldville mutinied against its white officers and attacked numerous European targets. This caused the fear amongst the approximately 100,000 whites still resident in the Congo and led to their mass exodus from the country.^[58]

• Ne Win's rise to power in 1962 and his relentless persecution of "resident aliens" (immigrant groups not recognised as citizens of the Union of Burma) led to an exodus of some 300,000 Burmese Indians. They migrated to escape racial discrimination and wholesale nationalisation of private enterprise a few years later in 1964.^[59][60]

• The creation of the apartheid system in South Africa, which began in 1948 but reached full flower in the 1960s and 1970s, involved some ethnic cleansing, including the separation of blacks, Coloureds, and whites into separate residential areas and private spheres. The government created Bantustans, which involved forced removals of non-white populations to reserved lands.^[61][62] The governing minority forced relocation of the majority to different areas, as well as restricting their movement, education and social activities.^{[citation needed]}

• As Algeria fought for independence, it expelled the pied-noir population of European descent and Jews; most fled to France, where they had citizenship. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of these European descendants and native Jewish people left the country.^[63][64]

• Zanzibar forced ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Indians from the nation in 1964.^[65][66]

• Some 150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting about 18% of the total population.^[67] In 1970, the government expelled all of Libya's ethnic Italians, a year after Muammar al-Gaddafi seized power (a "day of vengeance" on 7 October, 1970).^[68]

• By 1969, more than 350,000 Salvadorans were living in Honduras. In 1969, Honduras enacted a new land reform law. This law took land away from Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed this land to native-born Honduran peoples. Thousands of Salvadorans were displaced by this law (see Football War).^{[citation needed]}

• During the Bangladesh War of Independence of 1971 around 10 million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, fled the country to escape the killings and atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army. Furthermore, many intellectuals and other religious minorities were targeted by death squads and razakars.^{[citation needed]}

• Idi Amin's regime forced the expulsion in 1972 of Uganda's entire ethnic Asian population, mostly of Indian descent.^[69]

• Greek Cypriots and Greek military forced Turkish Cypriots out of Greek territory in Cyprus from 1963-1974.^[70]

• The ethnic cleansing in 1974-76 of the Greek population of the areas under Turkish military occupation in Cyprus during and after the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus.^[71]

• Following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, the Lao kingdom was overthrown by the communists and the Hmong people became targets of retaliation and persecution. Thousands made the trek to and across the Mekong River into Thailand, often under attack. This marked the beginning of a mass exodus of Hmong people from Laos.^{[citation needed]}

• The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia disproportionately targeted ethnic minority groups. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. In the late 1960s, an estimated 425,000 ethnic Chinese lived in Cambodia, but by 1984, as a result of Khmer Rouge genocide and emigration, only about 61,400 Chinese remained in the country. The Cham Muslims suffered serious purges with as much as half of their population exterminated. A Khmer Rouge order stated that henceforth “The Cham nation no longer exists on Kampuchean soil belonging to the Khmers” (U.N. Doc. A.34/569 at 9).^[72][73][74]

• Subsequent waves of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Burma and many refugees inundated neighbouring Bangladesh including 250,000 in 1978 as a result of the King Dragon operation in Arakan.^{[citation needed]}

• The Sino-Vietnamese War resulted in the discrimination and consequent migration of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese. Many of these people fled as "boat people". In 1978-79, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees (many officially encouraged and assisted) or were expelled across the land border with China.^{[citation needed]}

• Aftermath of Indira Gandhi assassination in 1984, the ruling party Indian National Congress supporters formed large mobs and killed around 3000 Sikhs around Delhi which is known as the Anti Sikh Riots during the next four days. The mobs using the support of ruling party leaders used the Election voting list to identify Sikhs and kill them.

• The forced assimilation campaign of the late 80s directed against ethnic Turks resulted in the emigration of some 300,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey.^{[citation needed]}

• The Nagorno Karabakh conflict has resulted in the displacement of population from both sides. 528,000 Azerbaijanis from Nagorno Karabakh Armenian controlled territories including Nagorno-Karabakh, and 185,000^[75] to 220,000 Azeris, 18,000 Kurds and 3,500 Russians fled from Armenia to Azerbaijan from 1988 to 1989.^[76] 280,000 to 304,000^[75] persons—virtually all ethnic Armenians—fled Azerbaijan during the 1988–1993 war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.^[77]

• Since April 1989, some 70,000 black Mauritanians—members of the Peul, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups—have been expelled from Mauritania by the Mauritanian government.^[78]

• In 1989, after bloody pogroms against the Meskhetian Turks by Uzbeks in Central Asia's Ferghana Valley, nearly 90,000 Meskhetian Turks left Uzbekistan.^[79][80]

• In 1991, following a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, 250,000 refugees took shelter in the Cox's Bazar district of neighbouring Bangladesh.^[81]

• As a result of 1991–1992 South Ossetia War, about 100,000 ethnic Ossetians fled South Ossetia and Georgia proper, most across the border into North Ossetia. A further 23,000 ethnic Georgians fled South Ossetia and settled in other parts of Georgia.^[82] According to Helsinki Watch, the campaign of ethnic-cleansing was orchestrated by the Ossetian militants, during the events of Ossetian–Ingush conflict, which resulted in expulsion of approximately 60,000 Ingush inhabitants from Prigorodny District.^[83]

• The widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Croatian War of Independence that was committed by rebel Serbs and Serb-led JNA on the occupied areas of Croatia (self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina) (1991-1995). Large number of Croats and non-Serbs were removed, either by murder, deportation or being forced to flee.

• The widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), Large numbers of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks were forced to flee their homes and expelled.^[84] Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in the Balkans displaced about 2,700,000 people by mid-1992, of which over 700,000 of them sought asylum in Europe.^[85][86]

• The widespread ethnic cleansing committed against Albanians on the Albanian-dominated breakaway Kosovo province (of Serbia) (1999). Large numbers of Albanians were forced to flee their homes and expelled.^[87]

• The forced displacement and ethnic-cleansing of more than 250,000 people, mostly Georgians but some others too, from Abkhazia during the conflict and after in 1993 and 1998.^[88]

• The 1994 massacres of nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide^{[89][better citation needed][citation needed]}

• The mass expulsion of southern Lhotshampas (Bhutanese of Nepalese origin) by the northern Druk majority of Bhutan in 1990.^[90] The number of refugees is approximately 103,000.^[91]

• An estimated 1,000 Tamil people were killed, tens of thousands of houses were destroyed by the Sinhalese-dominated government of Sri Lanka in what is commonly known as Black July.The murder, looting and general destruction of property was well organized. Mobs armed with petrol were seen stopping passing motorists at critical street junctions and, after ascertaining the ethnic identity of the driver and passengers, setting alight the vehicle with the driver and passengers trapped within it. Mobs were also seen stopping buses to identify Tamil passengers and subsequently these passengers were knifed, clubbed to death or burned alive.^{[citation needed]}

• In October 1990, the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), forcibly expelled the entire ethnic Muslim population (approx 75,000) from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. The Muslims were given 48 hours to vacate the premises of their homes while their properties were subsequently looted by LTTE. Those who refused to leave were killed. This act of ethnic cleansing was carried out so the LTTE could facilitate their goal of creating a mono-ethnic Tamil state in Northern Sri Lanka.^{[citation needed]}

• Displacement of more than 500,000 Chechen and ethnic Russian civilians living in Chechnya during the First Chechen War in 1994-1996.^[92][93][94]

• The Jakarta riots of May 1998 targeted many Chinese Indonesians. Suffering from lootings and arsons, many Chinese Indonesians fled from Indonesia.^[95][96]

• More than 800,000 Kosovar Albanians fled their homes in Kosovo during the Kosovo War in 1998-9, after being expelled. Although on the contrary over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities were forced out of Kosovo during and after the war while most Albanians returned.^[97][98]

• There have been serious outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence on the island of Kalimantan since 1997, involving the indigenous Dayak peoples and immigrants from the island of Madura. In 2001 in the Central Kalimantan town of Sampit, at least 500 Madurese were killed and up to 100,000 Madurese were forced to flee. Some Madurese bodies were decapitated in a ritual reminiscent of the headhunting tradition of the Dayaks of old.^[99]

21st century

• In Jammu and Kashmir, India, the violent Islamic insurgency has specifically targeted the Hindu Kashmiri Pandit minority and 400,000 have either been murdered or displaced.^[100] This has been condemned and labeled as ethnic cleansing in a 2006 resolution passed by the United States Congress.^[101] Also in 2009 Oregon Legislative Assembly passed a resolution to recognize September 14, 2007, as Martyrs Day to acknowledge ethnic cleansing and campaigns of terror inflicted on non-Muslim minorities of Jammu and Kashmir by militants seeking to establish an Islamic state.^[102]

• In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti Pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers. Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.^[103][104]

• In the late-1990s and early 2000s, paramilitaries organized and armed by the Indonesian military and police forces murdered large numbers of civilians in East Timor.^{[105][106][107][108][109][110][111]}

• Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. As of October 2005, the government has resumed its policy of forcing all Bushmen off their lands in the Game Reserve, using armed police and threats of violence or death.^[112] Many of the involuntarily displaced Bushmen live in squalid resettlement camps and some have resorted to prostitution and alcoholism, while about 250 others remain or have surreptitiously returned to the Kalahari to resume their independent lifestyle.^[113] “How can we continue to have Stone Age creatures in an age of computers?“ asked Botswana’s president Festus Mogae.^[114][115]

• Attacks by the Janjaweed, militias of Sudan on the African population of Darfur, a region of western Sudan.^[116][117] A 14 July 2007 article notes that in the past two months up to 75,000 Arabs from Chad and Niger crossed the border into Darfur. Most have been relocated by the Sudanese government to former villages of displaced non-Arab people. Some 2.5 million have now been forced to flee their homes after attacks by Sudanese troops and Janjaweed militia.^[118]

• Currently in the Iraq Civil War (2003 to present), entire neighborhoods in Baghdad are being ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni militias.^[119][120] Some areas are being evacuated by every member of a particular group due to lack of security, moving into new areas because of fear of reprisal killings. As of 21 June 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.^{[121][122][123]}

• Although Iraqi Christians represent less than 5% of the total Iraqi population, they make up 40% of the refugees now living in nearby countries, according to UNHCR.^[124][125] In the 16th century, Christians constituted half of Iraq's population.^[126] In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians.^[127] But as the 2003 invasion has allowed the growth of militant Islamism, Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad.^[128] Furthermore, the Mandaean and Yazidi communities are at the risk of elimination due to the ongoing atrocities by Islamic extremists.^[129][130] A 25 May 2007 article notes that in the past 7 months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.^[131]

• The ethnic cleansing of African American population of some racially mixed Los Angeles neighborhoods by Mexican street gangs. According to gang experts and law enforcement agents the Mexican Mafia leaders, or shot callers, have issued a "green light" on all blacks.^{[132][133][134][135][136]}

• In October 2006, Niger announced that it would deport the Arabs living in the Diffa region of eastern Niger to Chad.^[137] This population numbered about 150,000.^[138] While the government was rounding Arabs in preparation for the deportation, two girls died, reportedly after fleeing government forces, and three women suffered miscarriages. Niger's government had eventually suspended a controversial decision to deport Arabs.^[139][140]

• In 1950, the Karen had become the largest of 20 minority groups participating in an insurgency against the military dictatorship in Burma. The conflict continues as of 2008. In 2004, the BBC, citing aid agencies, estimates that up to 200,000 Karen have been driven from their homes during decades of war, with 120,000 more refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, living in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border. Many accuse the military government of Burma of ethnic cleansing.^[141] As a result of the ongoing war in minority group areas more than two million people have fled Burma to Thailand.^[142]

• Civil unrest in Kenya erupted in December 2007.^[143] By 28 January 2008, the death toll from the violence was at around 800.^[144] The United Nations estimated that as many as 600,000 people have been displaced.^[145][146] A government spokesman claimed that Odinga's supporters were "engaging in ethnic cleansing".^[147]

• The 2008 attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra began on 3 February 2008. Incidences of violence against North Indians and their property were reported in Bombay, Pune, Aurangabad, Beed, Nashik, Amravati, Jalna and Latur. Nearly 25,000 North Indian workers fled Pune,^[148][149] and another 15,000 fled Nashik in the wake of the attacks.^[150][151]

• South Africa Ethnic Cleansing erupted on 11 May 2008 within three weeks 80 000 were displaced the death toll was 62, with 670 injured by the violence when South Africans ejected non-nationals in a nationwide ethnic cleansing / Xenophobic outburst ejecting the "makwerekwere" BLACKer Africans. The most affected have been Zimbabweans (30 000), Mozambiqueans (20 000 have returned to Mozambique), Somalians, Ethiopians, Congolese, Angolans. Local South Africans have also been caught up in the violence and so have other non-African nationals. Refugee camps a mistake Arvin Gupta, a senior UNHCR protection officer, said the UNHCR did not agree with the City of Cape Town that those displaced by the violence should be held at camps across the city.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Social cleansing
• Communal violence
• Violence
• Ethnocide
• Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC)
• Population transfer
• Forced settlements in the Soviet Union
• Civilian casualties, civilian, non-combatant persons killed or injured by direct military action
• Command responsibility
• Crime against humanity
• Cultural assimilation
• Ethnic Cleansing, a computer game.
• German exodus from Eastern Europe
• World War II evacuation and expulsion
• Germanisation
• List of events named massacres
• List of wars and disasters by death toll
• Caste War of Yucatán
• 1989 events
• Partition of India
• 1971 Bangladesh atrocities
• Persecution of Hindus
• Persecution of Muslims
• Expulsion of Asians in Uganda in 1972
• Generalplan Ost
• Population transfer in the Soviet Union
• Polish minority in the Soviet Union
• Transmigration program
• Refugees of Iraq
• Sinophobia
• The Holocaust
• Iraqi Turkmen

References

Bibliography

• Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew (1993). "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing". Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 110.  [6]
• Jackson Preece, Jennifer (1998). "Ethnic Cleansing As An Instrument of Nation-State Creation". Human Rights Quarterly 20 (4): 359. doi:10.1353/hrq.1998.0039. 
• Petrovic, Drazen (1998). "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology". European Journal of International Law 5 (4): 817.  [7]

Notes

External links

• Totoist Atrocities in Vojvodina 1944-1945
• Genocide of The Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948
• Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide
• Photojournalist's Account - Images of ethnic cleansing in Sudan
• Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law (PDF)
• Genocides and Ethnic Cleansings of Central and East Europe, the Former USSR, the Caucasus and Adjacent Middle East -- 1890 - 2007
• Ethnic Cleansing in West Papua
• Dump the “ethnic cleansing” jargon, group implores May 31, 2007, World Science
• Visegrad Genocide Memories
• Srebrenica Genocide Blog
• Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law of the Sarajevo University

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