Ethnic cleansing as an independent international crime 214 7. It consists of the greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the. Expanding the crime of genocide to include ethnic cleansing. Genocide was the powerful word that he coined, combining. Darfur destroyed ethnic cleansing by government and. Ethnic cleansing bleaches the atrocities of genocide. The plan for genocide was already in place seventeen years before nikolai evdokimov began his ethnic cleansing. Whats the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing. Download printerfriendly pdf file with report text only 422 kb, 77 pages.
There is no ethnic cleansing and no genocide of rohingya this article is more than 2 years old more than half a million rohingya muslims have fled an army campaign in just a. Key tool developed by the office to assess the risk of atrocity crimes as well as atrocity prevention capacities and strategies. Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. Ethnic cleansing is a transfer from group defined in ethnic terms, being any configure of cultural group, from region a to region b naimark ethnic cleansing vs genocide genocide is the intentional killing off or part or all of an ethnic, religious or national group, murder is the objective. Terry martin argued that ethnic cleansing is the forcible removal of an ethnically defined population from a given territory and occupied the central part of a continuum between genocide on one end and nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration on the other end martin, 1998, p. Ethnic cleansing and genocide of rohingya by julie a. And in reality, the lines between ethnic cleansing and genocide are often blurred. He argues that terms such as genocide and ethnic cleansing are too narrow to explain the diverse motives and interests that cause violence to spread in varying forms and intensities. Darfur destroyed ethnic cleansing by government and militia forces in western sudan.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide are very similar concepts that refer to the killing and destruction of entire populations. Pdf genocide has been the leading cause of preventable violent death in the 20th21st century, taking even more lives than war. That site contains a chart on genocides, politicides, and other mass murder since 1945, with stages in 2006, which has the 200 000 figure, but. The term ethnic cleansing is used as a euphemism for genocide despite it having no legal status. The crimes committed against american indians have been a prominent part of the historiography of north america.
Myanmar and sri lanka are both countries with strong histories of buddhism engrained in their political systems. Not all experts agree on every case, particularly since there are a variety of definitions for the term ethnic cleansing. He initiated an ethnic cleansinggenocide program which resulted in the removal of at least 400,000 palestinians from the opt. Timelines for recent genocides bosnia, 19911996, 200000. Ethnic cleansing of georgians in abkhazia wikipedia. United nations office on genocide prevention and the. Ethnic cleansing has not been defined and is not recognized as a crime under international law, according to the u. Ethnic cleansing an attempt at methodology european journal of. Genocide and ethnic cleansing fredrik csdb24th april 2016 0 the holocaust from the greek. The word genocide didnt exist before 1944 until polishjewish lawyer raphael lemkin coined the term to describe the systematic mass murder of european jews at the hands of the nazis between the years of 1933 and 1945a. Many of the expeditions resulted in little more than random destruction of auls and food supplies, or simply searching the mountains and finding nothing at all. The term surfaced in the context of the 1990s conflict in the former yugoslavia and is considered to. The convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in.
The multiethnic republic of bosniaherzegovina quickly became the site of the deadliest warfare and the target of an ethnic cleansing. Genocide and ethnic cleansing fredrik csdb7th may 2016 0 the rwandan genocide, known officially in rwanda as the genocide against the tutsi, was a genocidal mass slaughter of tutsi and moderate hutu in rwanda by members of the. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and exile introduction. Genocide prevention and the responsibility to protect. Genocide in the twentieth century download pdfepub. While the degree of violence and the brutality of the two acts is quite similar, there are some differences as far as scope and intent of the crimes are concerned. Oct 24, 2017 ethnic cleansing has not been defined and is not recognized as a crime under international law, according to the u. John prendergast, omer ismail, and akshaya kumar august 20. In the late 1980s a serbian named slobodan milosevic came to power. Genocide and ethnic cleansing crime scene database. Bosniaherzegovinia, and the other six nations that made. Academic discourse considers both genocide and ethnic cleansing to exist in a spectrum of assaults on nations or religio ethnic groups.
In 2002, i was offered an unusual opportunity to teach a comparative course on genocide and ethnic cleansing to a classroom of undergraduate students universally drawn from postsocialist countries. The killing of hundreds of ethnic uzbeks in kyrgyzstan during the 2010 south kyrgyzstan riots resulting in the flight of thousands of uzbek refugees to uzbekistan have been called ethnic cleansing by the organization for security and cooperation in europe and international media. Mar 10, 2014 according to historian gary clayton anderson, however, the united states has its own legacy of ethnic cleansing, and it involves american indians. The term genocide was created during the holocaust and declared an international crime in the 1948 united nations convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The goal of an ethnic cleansing is to get rid of everyone who does not belong to the more powerful ethnic group. In 1992 acts of ethnic cleansing started in bosnia, a mostly muslim country where the serb minority made up only 32% of the population. Like judenrein and racial hygiene in nazi medicine, it expropriates pseudomedical terminology to justify massacre. In ethnic cleansing and the indian, anderson uses ethnic cleansing as an analytical tool to challenge the alluring idea that angloamerican colonialism in the new world constituted genocide. Use of the term reifies a dehumanized view of the victims as sources of filth and disease. Ethnic cleansing is a type of crime against humanity. America and the age of genocide, samantha power recounts the story of raphael lemkin, a polish jew, who was determined to find a word that would capture the barbarity of the nazi agenda and also carry the moral implications of targeting a specific ethnic group. Pdf ethnic cleansing bleaches the atrocities of genocide.
Download printerfriendly pdf file with report text only 422 kb, 77 pages download printerfriendly pdf file with text and map only 1. When these problems are corrected, their argument fails. Darfur destroyed ethnic cleansing by government and militia. In an ethnic cleansing, ethnic or religious groups are forced to leave an area by a more powerful ethnic group. By naming, he could also shame, and therefore attempt to prevent recurrent crimes against humanity. Rubenstein describes the holocaust in this section and labels it ethnic cleansing, but the nazi goals during the holocaust were not simply to remove the jews. The office of the special adviser on the prevention of genocide has developed an analysis framework that it uses to determine whether there may be a risk of genocide in a given situation. Throughout history, genocide and ethnic cleansing incidents have been instrumental for the many catastrophic incidents which took place on the face of the earth, ending the lives of many through unspeakable means while scarring the lives of the rest who survived. Ethnic cleansing is a process in which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogeneous region. Cultural homogenization, ethnic cleansing and genocide, in robert a. They had heard explosions but did not realize that serbian troops had already entered the town.
The dark side of democracy this book presents a new theory of ethnic cleansing based on the most terrible cases colonial genocides, armenia, the nazi holocaust, cambodia, yugoslavia, and rwanda and cases of lesser violence early modern europe, contemporary india, and indonesia. Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people in an attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence. Genocide is often understood as a crime committed predominantly through organized mass killingsthe majority of victims of which, both historically and today, tend to be male. The word genocide didnt exist before 1944 until polishjewish lawyer raphael lemkin coined the term to describe the systematic mass murder of european jews at the hands of the nazis between the. Rohingya who fled during operation pyi thaya repatriated under unhcrs watch. After the end of the war, the government of georgia, the united nations, the organization for security and cooperation in europe osce, and the refugees began to investigate and gather facts about the allegations of genocide, ethnic cleansing and deportation which was conducted by the abkhaz side during the conflict. Bosnia and herzegovina and croatia,2 the term was initially used by. Documented accounts of ethnic cleansing of georgians in abkhazia in russian video file, capture of zhuili shartava, guram gabiskiria, raul eshba, etc and their execution rightclick to open file video file, ethnic cleansing of georgians in abkhazia abkhazia. Border region immigration control restricts marriages of rohingya in maungdaw township. Difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing genocide vs ethnic cleansing.
The ethnic cleansing of georgians in abkhazia, also known as the massacres of georgians in abkhazia and genocide of georgians in abkhazia georgian. Ethnic cleansing of georgians in abkhazia explained. The burmese government has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing and committed atrocities including mass killings, arson, extortion. According to historian gary clayton anderson, however, the united states has its own legacy of ethnic cleansing, and it involves american indians. Ethnic cleansing and the mens rea of persecution 209 6.
In contrast, the role of media filtering in genocide and ethnic cleansing has been relatively well covered see cohen 2001. America and the age of genocide, samantha power recounts the story of raphael lemkin, a polish jew, who was determined to find a word that would capture the barbarity of the nazi agenda and also carry the moral implications of targeting a specific ethnic group lemkin finally settled on the. The genocide in bosnia claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 people. Throughout history, ethnic groups have been forced to flee from other ethnic groups more powerful armies. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the intentional murder of part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. Where claims of ethnic cleansing originate from nonexperts e. Ethnic cleansing by government and militia forces in western sudan.
This article lists incidents that have been termed ethnic cleansing by some academic or legal experts. Other contributors consider issues of political identity and legitimacy, coping, the media, and ethnic cleansing. The horrific mass atrocities against myanmars muslimminority rohingyas has stunned the whole world. Academic scholarship on genocide has grown immensely in response to the holocaust, postcolonial conflicts, and civil wars in developing countries. Milosevic responded to bosnias declaration of independence by attacking sarajevo, where serb snipers shot down civilians. The argument 74yearold batisha hoxha was sitting in her kitchen with her 77yearold husband, izet, staying warm by the stove. Genocide and ethnic cleansing cwsl scholarly commons. Because the crime of genocide was not part of international law prior to 1945, trials of former nazi officials and collaborators postnuremburg have usually involved charges of crimes against humanity with no mention of genocide. Ethnic cleansing has not been recognized as an independent crime under international law. May 01, 2010 in 2002, i was offered an unusual opportunity to teach a comparative course on genocide and ethnic cleansing to a classroom of undergraduate students universally drawn from postsocialist countries. There were several references to acts of extermination including on political, racial or religious grounds, mostly but not solely in reference to persecution of. The term ethnic cleansing corrupts observation, interpretation and ethical judgment and decisionmaking, and lacks official legal status. Consequently, nonkilling acts of genocidemore likely to be directed against female members of a protected groupare often cast. How is ethnic cleansing different from traditional wars.
This is rooted in a cosmological belief that buddhism will be wiped out in the dark ages. Conflicts between buddhist nationalist groups and rohingya have led to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Buddhist nationalist groups view islam as a threat to their nation. The economics of ethnic cleansing in darfur enough project. The armenian genocidethe first largescale mass murder of the twentieth centurymust be placed in a new context and understood within that context. He started an ethnic cleaninggenocidal campaign against the palestinian people in 1998 when the worlds attention was focused on the demonstrations occurring in tiananmen square. Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, only refers to the expulsion of a group from a certain area.
Truth, memory, and representation reveals the major contribution that cultural anthropologists can make to the study of genocide. For months, local arakanese political party officials and senior buddhist monks publicly vilified the. Ethnic cleansing bleaches the atrocities of genocide and its continuing use undermines the prevention of genocide. Miscellaneous ethnic cleansing bleaches the atrocities of genocidey. Cultural homogenization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
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