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Ethnic cleansing

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For the video game, see Ethnic Cleansing (computer game).

Ethnic cleansing refers to various policies or practices aimed at the displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory in order to create a supposedly ethnically "pure" society. The term entered English and international usage in the early 1990s to describe certain events in the former Yugoslavia. Its typical usage was developed in the Balkans, to be a less objectionable code-word meaning genocide, but its intent was to best avoid the obvious pitfalls of longstanding international treaty laws prohibiting war crimes. This Orwellian term has since become still more Orwellian, because it is occasionally used as a claim of war crimes, when no war crimes actually exist. For example, ethnic cleansing has become improperly used to describe a situation wherein poorer ethnic groups are being displaced economically, by other, generally more affluent ethnic groups.

Synonyms include sectarian revenge[citation needed] and ethnic purification and (in the French versions of some UN documents) nettoyage ethnique and épuration ethnique.[1]

Definitions

The term ethnic cleansing has been variously defined. In the many 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 an "undesirable" population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.[2]

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:

[E]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."[3]

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 /etnitʃko tʃiʃtʃʲeɲe/). [dubious – discuss] 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 field" (čišćenje terena, IPA /tʃiʃtʃʲeɲe 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 ethnic groups as well. It was used in this context in Yugoslavia as early as 1982, in relation to the policies of the Kosovo Albanian administration creating an "ethnically clean" territory (i.e. "cleanly" Albanian) in the province.[4] However, this usage had antecedents.

One of the earliest usages 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 [čišćenje] our Croatia of unwanted elements [...].[5] The Ustaše did carry 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.[6]

Some time later, 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 [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 Croatia, the Muslims to Turkey or perhaps Albania - while the vacated territory is settled with Serb refugees now located in Serbia.[7]

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). (refer to Robert Brinkman aka b dub's novel "ethnic cleansing"

Ethnic cleansing as a military and political tactic

File:Gagra massacre5467.jpg
Massacre of Georgian civilians in Gagra during the war in Abkhazia, 1992

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 Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Serb 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.[citation needed]

In 1993, during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, armed Abkhaz separatist insurgency confronted with large population of ethnic Georgians implemented the tactic of ethnic cleansing directed against ethnic Georgians (which made the majority of the population) of Abkhazia. [8] 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) [9] [10]

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 — recognizing Mao Zedong's dictum that guerrillas among a civilian population are fish in water, it disables the fish by draining 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[citation needed]. Some individuals of the large German population in Czechoslovakia and prewar Poland had been sources of friction before the Second World War, but this was forcibly resolved[citation needed]. It thus establishes "facts on the ground" - radical demographic changes which can be very hard to reverse[citation needed]. But this does not concern the treatment of the inhabitants of Historical Eastern Germany.[citation needed]

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.

Armenian civilians, being cleansed from their homeland during the Armenian Genocide.

Ethnic cleansing as a crime under international law

There is no formal legal definition of ethnic cleansing.[11] 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).[12] 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.[13]

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.[14]

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.[15]


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. [16]

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).

Instances of ethnic cleansing

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.

Early instances

  • Jews and Christians expelled from Morocco and Islamic Spain during the reign of Berber dynasty of Almohads in the 12th century. Almohads gave the Jews and Christians a choice of either death or conversion to Islam, or exile. Some, such the family of Maimonides, fled east to the more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.
  • In 1270, the Jews of Tunisia were required either to leave or to embrace Islam.

Colonial period

  • The ethnic cleansing of the light-skinned Spanish and Mestizo people by the Mayas from the eastern Yucatan and the territory of Quintana Roo during the Caste War of Yucatán. The greatest success of the Maya revolt was reached in the spring of 1848, with the Europeans and Mestizos driven from most of the peninsula other than the walled cities of Campeche and Mérida and the south-west coast.
  • 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.[20][21][4]
  • The Tasmanians, estimated at 8,000 people in 1803, were reduced to a population of around 300 by 1833, although much of this has been attributed to the effect of diseases to which they had no natural immunity (including smallpox and syphilis) and alcoholism, as opposed to direct violence.[22] Estimates of the total number of Tasmanian deaths at the hands of European settlers vary, with some controversial estimates ranging as low as 118 in the period from 1803 until 1847.[23] This conflict is a subject of the Australian history wars.

20th century

21st century

  • Attacks by the Janjaweed Arabs, Muslim militias of Sudan on the African population of Darfur, a region of western Sudan.[74][75] A July 14, 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 Sudanese goverment 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.[76]
  • Currently in the Iraq Civil War (2003 to present), entire neighborhoods in Baghdad are being ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni Militias. Some areas are being evacuated by every member of a particular secular group due to lack of security, moving into new areas because of fear of reprisal killings. As of November 4, 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.[77] UNHCR reports that Christians comprise 44% of Iraqi refugees, although only 4% of the overall population is Christian.[78] Iraq's Christian community numbered 1.4 million in 1980 at the start of Iran-Iraq War. But as the 2003 invasion has radicalized Islamic sensibilities, Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad.[79] Furthermore, the small Mandaean community is at the risk of elimination due to the ongoing atrocities by Islamic extremists.[80]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Drazen Petrovic, "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology", European Journal of International Law, Vol. No. 3. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
  2. ^ Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing", Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 110, Summer 1993. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
  3. ^ Petrovic, "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology" p.11 [1] and quoted by Ilan Pappe "The Ethnic cleansing of Palestine" 2006, p.1
  4. ^ Marvine Howe in the New York Times (July 12, 1982), quoting an Albanian official in Kosovo
  5. ^ Pavelicpapers.com
  6. ^ Pavelicpapers.com
  7. ^ The Moljevic Memorandum
  8. ^ US State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993, Abkhazia case
  9. ^ Chervonnaia, Svetlana Mikhailovna. Conflict in the Caucasus: Georgia, Abkhazia, and the Russian Shadow. Gothic Image Publications, 1994.
  10. ^ S State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993, February 1994, Chapter 17.
  11. ^ Ward Ferdinandusse, [http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol15/No5/9.pdf The Interaction of National and International Approaches in the Repression of International Crimes], The European Journal of International Law Vol. 15 no.5 (2004), p. 1042, note 7.
  12. ^ Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7; Updated Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Article 5.
  13. ^ Daphna Shraga and Ralph Zacklin "The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia", The European Journal of International Law Vol. 15 no.3 (2004).
  14. ^ A/RES/47/80 ""Ethnic cleansing" and racial hatred" United Nations. 12/16/1992. Retrieved on 2006, 09-03
  15. ^ Timothy V. Waters, On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing, Paper 951, 2006, University of Mississippi School of Law. Retrieved on 2006, 12-13
  16. ^ Krauthammer, Charles: "When Serbs Are 'Cleansed,' Moralists Stay Silent", International Herald Tribune, 12 August 1995
  17. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/making_history_winter2002.shtml
  18. ^ Battle of Manzikert (1071 A.D.)
  19. ^ Rezun, Miron, "Europe's Nightmare: The Struggle for Kosovo", (p. 6), Praeger/Greenwood (2001) ISBN 0-275-97072-8; Parker, Geoffrey, "Europe in Crisis", (p. 18), Blackwell Publishing (1979, 2000) ISBN 0-631-22028-3; Gadalla, Moustafa, "Egyptian Romany: The Essence of Hispania" (pp. 28-9), Tehuti Research Foundation (2004) ISBN 1-931446-19-9
  20. ^ 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)
  21. ^ Committee on Indian Affairs, US Senate, Cherokee Settlement and Accommodation Agreements Concerning the Navajo and Hopi Land Dispute, (US General Printing Office, 1996)
  22. ^ Historian dismisses Tasmanian aboriginal genocide "myth"
  23. ^ Our history not rewritten but put right. Accusations of genocide have been based on guesswork and blatant ideology. SMH, 24 November 2002
  24. ^ The Massacres of the Khilafah
  25. ^ Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, c1995
  26. ^ McCarthy, ibid.
  27. ^ Norman M. Naimark. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN. See also review by Nick Baron, H-Genocide, March 2004.
  28. ^ Kort, Michael (2001). The Soviet Colosus: History and Aftermath, p. 133. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0396-9.
  29. ^ Naimark, op. cit.
  30. ^ Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era
  31. ^ Ustasa, Croatian nationalist, fascist, terrorist movement created in 1930.
  32. ^ The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, European University Institute, Florense. EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/1, Edited by Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees pp. 4
  33. ^ Talbot, Ian: "India and Pakistan", (pp. 198-99), Oxford University Press (2000) ISBN 0-340-70632-5
  34. ^ British-Yemeni Society: Hadhrami migration in the 19th and 20th centuries
  35. ^ Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. (2004) ISBN 0-521-00967-7
  36. ^ Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Sussex Academic Press. (2005) ISBN 1-84519-075-0
  37. ^ Ilan Pappe, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld. (2006) ISBN 1-85168-467-0
  38. ^ Itamar Levin, Locked Doors: The Seizure of Jewish Property in Arab Countries. Praeger/Greenwood. (2001) ISBN 0-275-97134-1
  39. ^ Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries. (1977) ASIN B0006EGL5I
  40. ^ Malka Hillel Schulewitz, The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands. London. (2001) ISBN 0-8264-4764-3
  41. ^ Ran HaCohen, "Ethnic Cleansing: Some Common Reactions"
  42. ^ Easternization of the West: Children of the VOC
  43. ^ UN rights chief calls for intl probe into East Timor massacres
  44. ^ Justice Denied for East Timor
  45. ^ India, The World Factbook. Retrieved 20 May 2006.
  46. ^ ::UN:: History Learning Site
  47. ^ Marketplace: Pied-noirs breathe life back into Algerian tourism
  48. ^ Pied-Noir
  49. ^ Who's Fault Is It?
  50. ^ 1972: Asians given 90 days to leave Uganda
  51. ^ http://www.lobbyforcyprus.org/press/press1998-1940/suntimes230177.htm
  52. ^ Bell, Terry: "Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth", (pp. 63-4), Verso, (2001, 2003) ISBN 1-85984-545-2
  53. ^ Valentino, Benjamin A., "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century", (p. 189), Cornell University Press, (2004) ISBN 0-8014-3965-5.
  54. ^ De Waal, Black Garden, p. 285
  55. ^ Refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan]
  56. ^ Focus on Mesketian Turks
  57. ^ Meskhetian Turk Communities around the World
  58. ^ Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, The Ethnic Cleansing of Bosnia-Hercegovina, (US General Printing Office, 1992)
  59. ^ Bookman, Milica Zarkovic, "The Demographic Struggle for Power", (p. 131), Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. (UK), (1997) ISBN 0-7146-4732-2
  60. ^ Leeder, Elaine J., "The Family in Global Perspective: A Gendered Journey", (p. 164-65), Sage Publications, (2004) ISBN 0-7619-2837-5
  61. ^ Voice of America (18 October 2006)
  62. ^ UNHCR Publication (State of the world refugees)
  63. ^ First Chechnya War
  64. ^ Ethnic Russians in the North of Caucasus - Eurasia Daily Monitor
  65. ^ Chechen census fiasco
  66. ^ Serbia threatens to resist Kosovo independence plan
  67. ^ Kosovo/Serbia: Protect Minorities from Ethnic Violence (Human Rights Watch)
  68. ^ 'Israel evicts Gaza Strip settlers', BBC News Online, 17 August, 2005.
  69. ^ 'Settlers and army clash in W Bank', BBC News Online, 22 August, 2005.
  70. ^ Robinson, Eugene. "Betrayed in Gaza", Washington Post, August 19, 2005.
  71. ^ Klein, Morton A. "Gaza Withdrawal Rewards Terrorism", The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles February 27, 2004.
  72. ^ Jacoby, Jeff. "Sharon's retreat is a victory for terrorists", Jewish World Review, April 1, 2005.
  73. ^ Gross, Tom. Exodus From Gaza Tom Gross Mid-East Media Analysis. Retrieved November 4, 2006.
  74. ^ 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 0-9748198-7-5 .
  75. ^ Power, Samantha "Dying in Darfur: Can the ethnic cleansing in Sudan be stopped?"[2], 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.
  76. ^ Arabs pile into Darfur to take land 'cleansed' by janjaweed
  77. ^ U.N.: 100,000 Iraq refugees flee monthly. Alexander G. Higgins, Boston Globe, November 3, 2006
  78. ^ http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=7410
  79. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,1961207,00.html
  80. ^ Iraq's Mandaeans 'face extinction'

References

  • Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew (1993). "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing". Foreign Affairs. 72 (3): 110. [5]
  • Petrovic, Drazen (1994). "Ethnic Cleansing - An Attempt at Methodology". European Journal of International Law. 5 (1): 359. [6]
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