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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.[1][2][3][4][5] Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.[6][7][8]
Although scholars do not agree on which events constitute ethnic cleansing,[7] many instances have occurred throughout history. The term was first used to describe Albanian nationalist treatment of the Kosovo Serbs in the 1980s,[9][10] and entered widespread use during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. Since then, the term has gained widespread acceptance due to journalism.[11] Although research originally focused on deep-rooted animosities as an explanation for ethnic cleansing events, more recent studies depict ethnic cleansing as "a natural extension of the homogenizing tendencies of nation states" or emphasize security concerns and the effects of democratization, portraying ethnic tensions as a contributing factor. Research has also focused on the role of war as a causative or potentiating factor in ethnic cleansing. However, states in a similar strategic situation can have widely varying policies towards minority ethnic groups perceived as a security threat.[12]
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.[1][13][14]
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 BCE.[16] [17] Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide", considered the displacement of Native Americans by American settlers as a historical example of genocide.[18] Others, like historian Gary Anderson, contend that genocide does not accurately characterize any aspect of American history, suggesting instead that ethnic cleansing is a more appropriate term.[19] Circassian genocide, also known as "Tsitsekun", is often regarded by various historians as the first large-scale ethnic cleansing campaign launched by a state during the 19th century industrial era.[20][21] Imperial Russian general Nikolay Yevdakimov, who supervised the operations of Circassian genocide during 1860s, dehumanised Muslim Circassians as "a pestilence" to be expelled from their native lands. Russian objective was the annexation of land; and the Russian military operations that forcibly deported Circassians were designated by Yevdakimov as “ochishchenie” (cleansing).[22]
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).[23][page needed] A 1913 Carnegie Endowment report condemning the actions of all participants in the Balkan Wars contained various new terms to describe brutalities committed toward ethnic groups.[24]
During the Holocaust in World War II, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of ensuring that Europe was "cleaned of Jews" (judenrein).[25] The Nazi Generalplan Ost called for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of most Slavic people in central and eastern Europe for the purpose of providing more living space for the Germans.[26] During the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, the euphemism čišćenje terena ("cleansing the terrain") was used by the Croatian Ustaše to describe military actions in which non-Croats were purposely systematically killed or otherwise uprooted from their homes.[27][28] The term was also used in the December 20, 1941 directive of Serbian Chetniks in reference to the genocidal massacres they committed against Bosniaks and Croats between 1941 and 1945.[29] The Russian phrase очистка границ (ochistka granits; lit. "cleansing of borders") was used in Soviet documents of the early 1930s to refer to the forced resettlement of Polish people from the 22-kilometre (14 mi) border zone in the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs.[citation needed] This process of the population transfer in the Soviet Union was repeated on an even larger scale in 1939–1941, involving many other groups suspected of disloyalty.[30]
In its complete form, the term appeared for the first time in the Romanian language (purificare etnică) in an address by Vice Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu to cabinet members in July 1941. After the beginning of the invasion by the Soviet Union,[clarification needed] he concluded: "I do not know when the Romanians will have such chance for ethnic cleansing."[32] In the 1980s, the Soviets used the term "etnicheskoye chishcheniye" which literally translates to "ethnic cleansing" to describe Azerbaijani efforts to drive Armenians away from Nagorno-Karabakh.[33][34][35] It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War (1992–1995).
In 1992, the German equivalent of ethnic cleansing (German: ethnische Säuberung, pronounced [ˈʔɛtnɪʃə ˈzɔɪ̯bəʁʊŋ] ) was named German Un-word of the Year by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache due to its euphemistic, inappropriate nature.[36]
The Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 defined ethnic cleansing as:
a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas", [noting that in the former Yugoslavia] " 'ethnic cleansing' has been carried out by means of murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property. Those practices 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.[37][38]
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."[39] 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."[40]
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."[30]
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.[19][41]
There is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing;[42] 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 the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).[43] 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.[44] There are also situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, where ethnic cleansing has taken place without legal redress (see Preussische Treuhand v. Poland). Timothy v. Waters argues that similar ethnic cleansing could go unpunished in the future.[45]
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.[46] Other examples where mutual ethnic cleansing occurred include the First Nagorno-Karabakh War[47] and the population transfers by the Soviets of Germans, Poles, and Ukrainians after World War II.[48]
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. (March 2024) |
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.[49]
Ethnic cleansing was prevalent during the Age of Nationalism in Europe (19th and 20th centuries).[50][51] Multi-ethnic European engaged in ethnic cleansing against minorities in order to pre-empt their secession and the loss of territory.[50] Ethnic cleansing was particularly prevalent during periods of interstate war.[50]
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.[53][54]
Some academics consider genocide to be a subset of "murderous ethnic cleansing".[55] Norman Naimark writes that these concepts are different but related, for "literally and figuratively, ethnic cleansing bleeds into genocide, as mass murder is committed in order to rid the land of a people."[56] William Schabas states "ethnic cleansing is also a warning sign of genocide to come. Genocide is the last resort of the frustrated ethnic cleanser."[53] Multiple genocide scholars have criticized distinguishing between ethnic cleansing and genocide, with Martin Shaw arguing that forced deportation necessarily results in the destruction of a group and this must be foreseen by the perpetrators.[a][57][19][41]
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.[61]
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 killing 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[62][63][64] and Croat[65] forces performed ethnic cleansing of their territories planned by their political leadership to create ethnically pure states (Republika Srpska and Republic of Serbian Krajina by the Serbs; and Herzeg-Bosnia by the Croats).
Survivors of the ethnic cleansing were left severely traumatized as a consequence of this campaign.[66]
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.[67][68][69]
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.[70][page needed] 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.[70][page needed]
According to historian Norman Naimark, during an ethnic cleansing process, there may be destruction of physical symbols of the victims including temples, 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."[71] In many cases, the side perpetrating the alleged ethnic cleansing and its allies have fiercely disputed the charge.[clarification needed]
Most frequently, however, the aim of ethnic cleansing is to expel the despised ethnic group through either indirect coercion or direct force, and to ensure that return is impossible. Terror is the fundamental method used to achieve this end.
Methods of indirect coercion can include: introducing repressive laws and discriminatory measures designed to make minority life difficult; the deliberate failure to prevent mob violence against ethnic minorities; using surrogates to inflict violence; the destruction of the physical infrastructure upon which minority life depends; the imprisonment of male members of the ethnic group; threats to rape female members, and threats to kill. If ineffective, these indirect methods are often escalated to coerced emigration, where the removal of the ethnic group from the territory is pressured by physical force. This typically includes physical harassment and the expropriation of property. Deportation is an escalated form of direct coercion in that the forcible removal of 'undesirables' from the state's territory is organised, directed and carried out by state agents. The most serious of the direct methods, excluding genocide, is murderous cleansing, which entails the brutal and often public murder of some few in order to compel flight of the remaining group members.13 Unlike during genocide, when murder is intended to be total and an end in itself, murderous cleansing is used as a tool towards the larger aim of expelling survivors from the territory. The process can be made complete by revoking the citizenship of those who emigrate or flee.
The Commission considered techniques of ethnic cleansing to include murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial executions, sexual assault, confinement of civilian populations in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian populations, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property.
Violent conflict changes communities. "Returnees painfully discover that in their period of absence the homeland communities and their identities have undergone transformation, and these ruptures and changes have serious implications for their ability to reclaim a sense of home upon homecoming." The first issue in terms of returning home is usually the restoration of property, specifically the return or rebuilding of homes. People want their property restored, often before they return. But home means more than property, it also refers to the nature of the community. Anthropological literature emphasizes that time and the experience of violence changes people's sense of home and desire to return, and the nature of their communities of origin. To sum up, previous research has identified factors that influence decisions to return: time, trauma, family characteristics and economic opportunities.
'Ethnic cleansing' is probably better described as a popular or journalistic expression, with no recognized legal meaning in a technical sense... 'ethnic cleansing' is equivalent to deportation,' a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions as well as a crime against humanity, and therefore a crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
The thesis being proposed here is that the Armenian Genocide was not implemented solely as demographic engineering, but also as destruction and annihilation, and that the 5 to 10 percent principle was decisive in achieving this goal. Care was taken so that the number of Armenians deported to Syria, and those who remained behind, would not exceed 5 to 10 percent of the population of the places in which they were found. Such a result could be achieved only through annihilation... According to official Ottoman statistics, it was necessary to reduce the prewar population of 1.3 million Armenians to approximately 200,000.
The concept seems to have been borrowed from the Slavic expression etnicheskoye chishcheniye, first used by Soviet authorities in the 1980s to describe Azeri attempts to expel Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh area, and then immediately reappropriated by Serb nationalists to describe their policies in the central region of Yugoslavia.
Upon examination of reported information, specific studies and investigations, the Commission confirms its earlier view that 'ethnic cleansing' is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. To a large extent, it is carried out in the name of misguided nationalism, historic grievances and a powerful driving sense of revenge. This purpose appears to be the occupation of territory to the exclusion of the purged group or groups. This policy and the practices of warring factions are described separately in the following paragraphs.Paragraph 130.
Explaining the relationship between ethnic cleansing and genocide has caused controversy. Ethnic cleansing shares with genocide the goal of achieving purity but the two can differ in their ultimate aims: ethnic cleansing seeks the forced removal of an undesired group or groups where genocide pursues the group's 'destruction'. Ethnic cleansing and genocide therefore fall along a spectrum of violence against groups with genocide lying on the far end of the spectrum.
When murder itself becomes the primary goal, it is typically called genocide... Ethnic cleansing is probably best understood as occupying the central part of a continuum between genocide on one end and nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration on the other end. Given this continuum, there will always be ambiguity as to when ethnic cleansing shades into genocide
The crime of genocide is aimed at the intentional destruction of an ethnic group. 'Ethnic cleansing' would seem to be targeted at something different, the expulsion of a group with a view to encouraging or at least tolerating its survival elsewhere. Yet ethnic cleansing may well have the effect of rendering the continued existence of a group impossible, thereby effecting its destruction. In other words, forcible deportation may achieve the same result as extermination camps.
These methods are a part of a wider continuum ranging from genocide at one extreme to emigration under pressure at the other... It is important - politically and legally - to distinguish between genocide and ethnic cleansing. The goal of the former is extermination: the complete annihilation of an ethnic, national or racial group. It contains both a physical element (acts such as murder) and a mental element (those acts are undertaken to destroy, in whole or in part, the said group). Ethnic cleansing involves population expulsions, sometimes accompanied by murder, but its aim is consolidation of power over territory, not the destruction of a complete people.
A new term was needed because ethnic cleansing and genocide two different activities, and the differences between them are important. As in the case of determining first-degree murder, intentionality is a critical distinction. Genocide is the intentional killing off of part or all of an ethnic, religious, or national group; the murder of a people or peoples (in German, Völkermord) is the objective. The intention of ethnic cleansing is to remove a people and often all traces of them from a concrete territory. The goal, in other words, is to get rid of the "alien" nationality, ethnic, or religious group and to seize control of the territory it had formerly inhabited. At one extreme of its spectrum, ethnic cleansing is closer to forced deportation or what has been called "population transfer"; the idea is to get people to move, and the means are meant to be legal and semi-legal. At the other extreme, however, ethnic cleansing and genocide are distinguishable only by the ultimate intent. Here, both literally and figuratively, ethnic cleansing bleeds into genocide, as mass murder is committed in order to rid the land of a people.
Hitler wanted the Jews utterly exterminated, not simply driven from particular places. Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, involves removals rather than extermination and is not exceptional but rather common in particular circumstances.
In the Motion, the Prosecution submits that both the existence and implementation of the plan to create an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb state by Bosnian Serb political and military leaders are facts of common knowledge and have been held to be historical and accurate in a wide range of sources.
Importantly, the objectives remained the same: to create an ethnically pure Serb State by uniting Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and extending that State from the FRY [...] to the Croatian Krajina along the important logistics and supply line that went through opstina Prijedor, thereby necessitating the expulsion of the non-Serb population of the opstina.
Significantly, the Trial Chamber held that a reasonable Trial Chamber, could make a finding beyond any reasonable doubt that all of these acts were committed to carry out a plan aimed at changing the ethnic balance of the areas that formed Herceg-Bosna and mainly to deport the Muslim population and other non-Croat population out of Herceg-Bosna to create an ethnically pure Croatian territory within Herceg-Bosna.