Ethnic Cleansing

Ethnic Cleaning: A Historical Overview

Ethnic cleansing has been a feature of social and state relations since antiquity. In practice, though, it is difficult to distinguish ethnic cleansing from other types of removal that were not attempts to remove a clearly defined group from a specific territory. Further, when cleansing has been accompanied by extensive massacres, it often crosses the threshold from cleansing to genocide, which is the attempt to destroy in whole or in part a group of people based on the group's racial, ethnic, or national identity. Thus, the lines between cleansing and genocide, even though analytically discrete, blur in practice because both events can include degrees of violence and massacre accompanying forced removals.

Forced deportations and enslavement characterized ethnic cleansing until the Middle Ages. The target groups were the conquered peoples of wars. In the Middle Ages, the targets of ethnic cleansing were religious minorities. For example, Christians were deported from Muslim territories and vice versa. By the 19th century, the ideological motivation for ethnic [Page 261]cleansing shifted again. This time, in addition to religious groups, racial and ethnic minorities also became the targets of cleansing. One example is the U.S. Federal Removal Act of 1830, which forced the removal of various groups of Indian people from their ancestral lands.

Ethnic Cleaning in the 20th Century

In the 20th century, ethnic cleansing continued to be related to military operations, planned, and directed by political leaders of states. The campaigns for ethnic cleansing included nonviolent and violent measures. Nonviolent measures, which were more or less administrative, included policies such as dismissal from work, removal of medical care, or forced labor or other measures that incited violence such as racist propaganda, death threats, or publication of citizens according to ethnic origins intended to marginalize and isolate target groups.

More violent tactics were either part of the lead up to cleansing campaigns or accompanied ethnic cleansing. These tactics were carried out by citizens, paramilitary, and military personnel, working together or separately, although military personnel usually were responsible for summary executions, the blocking of humanitarian aid, targeting citizens for bombing, taking and exchanging hostages, running detention centers, using civilians as human shields, attacking refugee camps, and so forth. Unlike some administrative measures, military measures, as well as violent tactics and policies that incited violence, violate international law. These tactics and policies included robbery, physical intimidation, shootings, destruction of homes and other personal property, leading to mass displacement and mass deportations. Ethnic cleansing was extended beyond the physical removal of bodies to removing all traces of an ethnic group's existence by destroying places of worship, changing of street names, and the like.

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