Ethnic cleansing

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. At one end of the spectrum, it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population transfer, 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.

Table of contents

1 Origins of the term
2 Ethnic cleansing in history
3 Colonization-related ethnic cleansing
4 Modern age ethnic cleansing
5 Ethnic cleansing as a military and political tactic
6 Ethnic cleansing as international law crime
7 References and Links

Origins of the term

The term "ethnic cleansing" entered the English lexicon as a literal translation of the Serbian/Croatian phrase etničko čišćenje. 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) 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 other ethnic groups as well. It was used in this context by the Yugoslav media as early as 1981, in relation to the policies of the Kosovo Albanian administration allegedly creating an "ethnically clean territory" (i.e. "clean" of Serbs) in the province. However, this usage had antecedents. The earliest known usage of it appears to have been in February 1942, when the Bosnian Serb nationalist Stevan Moljević proposed that an ethnically pure Serbia should be extended across Bosnia into Dalmatia and that there should then follow "the cleansing [čišćenje] of the land of all non-Serb elements." It is possible that the revival of nationalism in the 1980s reintroduced ethnic cleansing - which was practiced by all sides in the Second World War - into Yugoslavia's political debate and language.

A similar term with the same intent was used by the Nazi administration in Germany under Adolf Hitler 50 years earlier. 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.

Ethnic cleansing in history

In ancient times, the Roman Empire would often enslave or exile entire peoples, most famously the Jews following the revolt of 70 AD in Judea. After the expulsion Jews became nomadic nation without homeland. During the Middle Ages every country that hosted them, felt entitle to expel them, if conditions changed.

However, sometimes the expulsion of Jews had some features of ethnic cleansing, especially if it were accompanied by the violence and were enacted on the whole territory of the state. I.e. Jews were expelled from England (1290), France (1306), Hungary (1349–1360), Provence (1394 and 1490), Austria (1421), Portugal (1497) and various parts of Germany at various times, Russia in 1724. 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 were expelled from Lithuania (1491) and allowed to return 10 years later. Expulsion of Jews in some cases can be compared to the expulsion of illegal immigrants, as is practised by modern countries from time to time. Spain's large Muslim minority, inherited from that country's former Islamic kingdoms, was expelled in 1502 and 1609–1614.

Some narratives in the Torah and other books of the Old Testament in the Bible (also known as the Hebrew Bible or Tenakh) describing the Hebrew (or Israelite) conquest of Canaan (in ca. 13th century B.C.E. or before) would now be considered descriptions of ethinic cleansing or even genocide. In several places the Hebrew God, Yahweh commands the Hebrews to give every man, woman and child after capturing a city, and sometimes cities also had to be burnt to the ground. It was also standard practice at the time to murder or enslave prisoners of war and their families.

For example, according to the biblical narative, the people of the Caananite village of Ai are massascred by Joshua's troops in Joshua 8:20-25. In one passage detailing "the holy war against Midian" (Numbers 31:1-24). In verses 13-24 Moses asks the victorious Hebrew troops why they have spared the lives of all the women who had "perverted the sons of Israel" into rejecting God. Moses then orders the Hebrew troops to kill all the male children and women who are not virgins. Moses allowed the men to keep virginal young girls for themselves (which probably means young--even prepubasecent girls--would have been raped). Today, since Midian was most likely a city-state, this act would constitute genocide and many war crimes.

According to biblical narrative of Joshua's conquest of Jericho, the walls came tumbing down killing everyone in the city (including hundreds of civilians) except a harlot who defected to the Hebrew side. The Egyptians' enslavement and oppression of Semitic tribes like the Hebrews was also a form of ethnic cleansing.

England expelled Gypsies, France expelled Huguenots.

During more recent times, ethnic cleansing has often been used during colonisation projects. In North America, British and American settlers ethnically cleansed dozens of Native American tribes, forcibly relocating them to concentration encampments, called reservations. In southern Africa and Australia, native tribes were removed from their lands that they could be replaced by white farmers and settlers.

Colonization-related ethnic cleansing

Examples of ethnic cleansing:

The genocidal invasion and annexation of what are now called the Americas, by European soldiers, explorers and colonists. This led to mass deportation, extermination, enslavement and persecution of the indigenous population, starting in the 15th century. In the early 20th century many Native American children were sent to boarding schools to forcibibly assymilate them into white American culture. Many were beaten for speaking their own language.
The genocidal invasion and annexation of what are now called Australia and New Zealand, by European soldiers, explorers and colonists. This led to mass deportation, extermination, enslavement and persecution of the indigenous population, starting in 1788 (continuing into the early 20th century when the Lost Generation of Australian Aborigine children were kidnapped from their families by the government--which would now constitute genocide).
The forcible deportation and enslavement of Africans by the Europeans and the Arabs, most infamously the Atlantic Slave Trade triangle of Europe, Africa and European colonies in the Americas. Over 10 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans between the 15th and 19th centuries. Almost all African Americans are descendants of African slaves. The Arab and Ottoman Turk slave trade continued until the end of the First World War, whilst the Europeans and the United States abolishing slavery in the 19th century (with the British Empire instead using indentured labourers from India known as coolies). (However some do not consider the African slave an act of ethnic cleansing since the aim was not to deport any particular group)

(The population of indigenous Americans, Australians and Maori New Zealanders has been reduced from millions to thousands in only a few centuries of European conquest, making them ethnic minorities in their own lands. Therefore the ethnic cleansing of these peoples could be considered two of histories most successful genocides)

Modern age ethnic cleansing

The ethnic cleansing term is now applied to some massive scale events during the 20th century, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. Alleged new age instances of ethnic cleansing include:

Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755.
The Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Pontian Greeks perpetrated by the Young Turks during 1914–1922.
The expulsion of Poles from Belorussia and Ukraine 1932–1936 to Kazakhstan.
The form of ethnic cleansing was also Jewish Holocaust, in which people were expelled to death camps.
The expulsions of Jews from Austria after the Anschluss, and deportations of Poles and Jews from Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany.
The deportations of Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians from areas occupied by Soviet Union 1939–1941.
The ethnic cleansing of Volhynia from Poles by the Ukrainian guerrilla groups.
The mass deportation and exile of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Balkars, Kalmyks and other minorities living in the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1943–1944, under the pretense of collaborating with Nazi Germany
The expulsion of Poles from Zamosc Voivodship by Germans in 1944.
The expulsions of 800,000 Poles from Warsaw to concentration camps after defeat of Warsaw Uprising 1944, caused 200,000 deaths. The million city of Warsaw was ordered to be completely demolished on the personal order of Hitler, completed in 80%. Himmler stated, that the aim, was to remove permanently the obstacle for German Eastern expansion, allegedly Poles had been for the last 700 years.
The evacuation and expulsion of Germans from eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, notably from the Sudetenland and East Prussia, started as an evacuation by the German authorities, hastened by revenge attacks by Soviet troops and ultimately completed by USSR and its satellite states following the decisions at the Potsdam conference.
The mass deportation of ethnic minorities from their homelands like East Timor and West Papua by the Indonesian government, from the Indonesian independence in 1947 (and subsequent occupation and annexation of Papua until the present day and of East Timor until ca. 1999).
The expulsion of large Jewish communities from Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan during 1948–1950.
The mass deportation of people from Tibet after the Chinese invasion in 1950.
The mass expulsion of Turks and Greeks from each other's respective parts of Cyprus during the 1974 civil war and Turkish invasion.
The very widespread ethnic cleansing of 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 break-away Albanian-dominated breakaway Serb province of Kosovo (1999). The tactic was used by all sides in the wars, with millions of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians expelled or otherwise forced to flee from their homes. In 2004 there were even more forced deportations in Kosovo (now UN-administered), this time of Serbs by Albanian rioters following an upsurge in sectarian violence.
The forced excursion of Hindus from the Indian-administered region of the disputed territory of Kashmir by paramilitary groups (which are accused of links to the Pakistani governmnent by India) 1989 to date.

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 Serbian campaign in Bosnia in early 1992 was a case in point. As well as fighting a traditional war with the Bosnian Army, the Serbian forces sought to eradicate the entire non-Serb population of the areas they controlled, either through massacres (as at Srebrenica) or more usually through terrorization of the civilian population to encourage them to flee to territory controlled by government forces. The tactic was also adopted by Croatian and Bosnian forces, and was repeated on a large scale during the Kosovo War in 1999. 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 Tse Tung'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 Germans from outside of Germans border 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 very 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. It can also create political problems in the long term as "cleansed" communities campaign to be allowed to return home, as in the case of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Ethnic cleansing as international law crime

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 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 cleansing" in the past doesn't fit in the modern definition of the crime against humanity. For example German expulsions was sanctioned by the international agreement at Potsdam conference. The agreement required the action to be proceed in humanitarian way.

References and Links

"A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing", Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (1993) 110
"Ethnic Cleansing — An Attempt at Methodology", Drazen Petrovic, European Journal of International Law, 5 EJIL (1994) 1-359