Crimes against humanity are defined as “any of the following when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population”. The acts include murder, extermination, slavery, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape (and other gender-based or sexual crimes), collective persecution, enforced disappearances, apartheid and “other inhumane acts of a similar character that intentionally cause great suffering or serious injury to physical, mental or physical integrity.” Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, criticized the rise of the term and its use for events that he believes should be called “genocide”: Since “ethnic cleansing” has no legal definition, its media use can distract from events that should be prosecuted as genocide. [23] [24] A precursor of the term is the Greek word andrapodismos (ἀνδραποδισμός; lit. “slavery”), which was used in ancient texts. for example to describe the atrocities that accompanied the conquest of Thebes by Alexander the Great in 335 BC. [8] In the early 1900s, regional variants of the term could be found among the Czechs (očista), Poles (czystki etniczne), French (purge) and Germans (purge). T92 [page needed] A 1913 report from the Carnegie Endowment condemning the actions of all participants in the Balkan Wars included several new terms to describe brutality against ethnic groups. [10] The term ethnic cleansing refers to the forced expulsion of an ethnic group from an area. A United Nations commission of experts investigating the former Yugoslavia defined it as “the ethnically homogeneous formation of an area through the use of force or intimidation to expel individuals from certain groups from the territory.” Unlike crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, ethnic cleansing is not recognized as a crime in its own right under international law.
However, the practice of ethnic cleansing may constitute genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. In its full form, the term first appeared in Romanian (purificare etnică) in a speech by Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu to cabinet members in July 1941. After the invasion of the Soviet Union began, he concluded: “I don`t know when Romanians will have such a chance of ethnic cleansing. [17] In the 1980s, the Soviets used the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe inter-ethnic violence in Nagorno-Karabakh. [8] Around the same time, the Yugoslav media used it to describe what they called an Albanian nationalist conspiracy to force all Serbs out of Kosovo. It was widely disseminated by Western media during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). An early example of the term was in a 1991 Reuters article. [18] In many cases, the site that carried out the alleged ethnic cleansing and its allies vehemently denied the accusations. Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied by efforts to eliminate physical and cultural evidence of the target audience in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centres, farms and infrastructure, as well as the desecration of monuments, cemeteries and places of worship. [ref. Some scholars view genocide as a subset of “murderous ethnic cleansing.” [33] As Norman Naimark writes, these concepts are different but related, because “literally and figuratively, ethnic cleansing turns into genocide, because mass murder is committed to rid the country of a people.” [34] William Schabas adds: “Ethnic cleansing is also a harbinger of the coming genocide.
Genocide is the last resort of the frustrated ethnic cleanser. [31] Sociologist Martin Shaw has criticized the distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide, as both ultimately lead to the destruction of a group through coercive violence. [35] [a] In 1992, the German equivalent of ethnic cleansing (pronounced [ˈʔɛtnɪʃə ˈzɔɪ̯bəʁʊŋ] (listen)) was named German Unword of the Year by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache due to its euphemism and inappropriateness. [25] Some say that failed states experience the most massacres, often in an anarchic manner. According to Michael Mann in The Dark Side of Democracy (2004), murderous ethnic cleansing is closely linked to the creation of democracies. He argues that murderous ethnic cleansing is due to the rise of nationalism, which links citizenship to a particular ethnic group. Democracy is thus linked to ethnic and national forms of exclusion. Yet it is not democratic states that are more vulnerable to ethnic cleansing because minorities tend to have constitutional guarantees. Nor are they stable authoritarian regimes (with the exception of Nazi and Communist regimes) susceptible to murderous ethnic cleansing, but regimes in the process of democratization.
Ethnic hostility occurs when ethnicity eclipses social classes as the original system of social stratification. Typically, in deeply divided societies, categories such as class and ethnicity are deeply intertwined, and when one ethnic group is seen as an oppressor or exploiter of the other, serious ethnic conflicts can develop. Michael Mann believes that when two ethnic groups can claim sovereignty over the same territory and feel threatened, their differences can lead to serious grievances and the risk of ethnic cleansing.