Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring
to the persecution through imprisonment, ex-
pulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic
minority by a local majority to achieve ethnic
homogeneity
in majority-controlled territ-
ory.[1] It is sometimes used interchangeably
with the more connotatively severe term gen-
ocide. The term entered English and interna-
tional media usage in the early 1990s to de-
scribe war events in the former Yugoslavia.
Examples range from ancient history to mod-
ern day situations.
Synonyms include ethnic purification .[2]
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 eth-
nic cleansing is "rendering an area ethnically
homogeneous by using force or intimidation
to remove from a given area persons of an-
other 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 for-
cible removal of an ethnically defined popula-
tion from a given territory", occupying the
middle part of a somewhat fuzzy continuum
between nonviolent pressured ethnic emigra-
tion 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 es-
tablish that a genocide had occurred:
The term ’ethnic cleansing’ has fre-
quently been employed to refer to
the events in Bosnia and Herzegov-
ina which are