Ethnic cleansing

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Ethnic cleansing or religiously motivated or religious cleansing ( English ethnic cleansing or religious cleansing ) refers to the removal of an ethnic or religious group from a certain territory . This mostly takes place through forced displacement , resettlement , deportation or murder. The term has been used more frequently since 1992 to describe events during the Yugoslav wars and has subsequently been used for similar events around the world.

An ethnic segregation ( segregation ) can also take place through a planned and organized exchange of population. The Treaty of Constantinople (signed in 1913 between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, after the Second Balkan War ) is considered to be the first peace treaty in history that provided for an exchange of people between the parties with the aim of ethnic segregation. Both Balkan Wars (1912/1913) were marked by a high level of ethnically based violence: all sides murdered and expelled numerous civilians from the other peoples.

The term was and is partly received as a neutral term and partly criticized as a euphemism for genocide . In 1992, the Society for German Language named it German Unword of the Year . The American political scientist Norman M. Naimark described the term "ethnic cleansing" as a "useful and defensible term". In contrast to genocide, ethnic cleansing is generally not primarily aimed at extermination, but rather at removing a group; if methods such as mass murder are used, it can take on the dimension of genocide.

The term is also used at the United Nations .

Origin and use

The Serbo-Croatian term etničko čišćenje was originally used by Serbs in Yugoslavia in the 1980s as an expression for the alleged dealings between Albanian speakers and the Serbian population of Kosovo . At the beginning of the Bosnian War , the term was used as ethnic cleansing in the German-speaking area and in other translations in the rest of the world, where it referred to the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims.

Ethnic cleansing occurred at all times (the Turkish wars , the expulsion of the Circassians from the Caucasus, the majority of the conflicts in the Balkans, the colonization of North and South America); a number of ethnic cleansing took place in the 20th century. The displacement of black African tribes from 2003 onwards during the Darfur conflict in western Sudan has been described as the greatest ethnic cleansing .

Differentiation from genocide

Ethnic cleansing is not necessarily synonymous with genocide , but genocide (genocide) can be a means of ethnic cleansing. The distinguishing criterion is the intention. While genocide is understood to mean the deliberate partial or total killing of an ethnic, religious or national group, the aim of ethnic cleansing can also be to “merely” remove such a group from an area. The spectrum of the coercive measures applied ranges from the forced departure to the so-called population exchange to the deportation and mass murder. In extreme cases, the only difference between mass murder during ethnic cleansing and genocide is the goal: Insofar as expulsion is supposed to be a means of genocide or is factual, the transitions are accordingly fluid.

Forms of violence

In order to force a population group to resettle, the perpetrators usually commit acts of violence such as torture , rape and murder, shelters are destroyed and property is robbed.

Punishing ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing meets some of the criteria of crimes against humanity set out at the Nuremberg Trials . Since "ethnic cleansing" is not a clear legal but a predominantly political term, the charges and convictions at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for differently designated offenses, such as a. Crimes against humanity in the expulsion of over 170,000 Croatians from parts of Croatia during the war in Croatia , the later expulsion of 150,000 to 200,000 Serbs during the Oluja military operation in Croatia in August 1995 or in the case of the person responsible for the mass shootings of Bosniaks in the UN protection zone Srebrenica for genocide .

According to Section 7 (1) No. 4 of the International Criminal Code , ethnic cleansing is a criminal offense in Germany.

special cases

A special case is a settlement policy as in the case of Israel in East Jerusalem . In some parts of the city, the established Arab-Palestinian population is increasingly being exchanged for a Jewish-Israeli population. However, this is not primarily done with physical violence. As a rule, resident Arab Palestinians are initially challenged by legal means, especially in the case of unclear property relationships, for building and housing rights. The implementation of the legal decisions often takes place in that existing buildings on the land in question are demolished and replaced with new, mostly higher-quality buildings. Palestinians who move out of Jerusalem also lose their residence permits.

literature

  • Stephen Bela Vardy, T. Hunt Tooley (Eds.): Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe. Foreword Otto von Habsburg . Columbia University Press, Boulder CO 2003, ISBN 0-88033-995-0 , (Papers. Held as the 34th annual Duquesne University history forum).
  • Detlef Brandes , Holm Sundhaussen, Stefan Troebst (ed.): Lexicon of expulsions. Deportation, Forced Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78407-4 .
  • Ray M. Douglas: Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Yale University Press, New Haven CT 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-16660-6 .
    German: Proper transfer. The expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Translated by Martin Richter. CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-62294-6 .
  • Stephan Maninger: Ethnic conflicts along the development periphery . Institute for International Politics and International Law, Munich. In: Ordo inter nationes , June 6, 1998, ISSN  1433-3953 .
  • Michael Mann: The dark side of democracy. A theory of ethnic cleansing. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-936096-75-0 .
  • Norman M. Naimark : Flaming hatred. Ethnic cleansing in the 20th century. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51757-9 .
  • Ilan Pappe : The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 3rd edition, Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-86150-791-8 .
  • Michael Schwartz : Ethnic “cleansing” in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70425-9 (= sources and representations on contemporary history , volume 95).
  • Philipp Ther: The dark side of the nation states. “Ethnic Cleansing” in Modern Europe. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-36806-0 (= syntheses , volume 5).

Web links

Wiktionary: ethnic cleansing  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Norman M. Naimark : Flaming hatred. Ethnic cleansing in the 20th century. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51757-9 , p. 10 ff.
  2. ^ Dagmar P. Stroh: The national cooperation with the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. Springer, 2002, ISBN 3-540-43049-0 , p. 10.
  3. ↑ Master plan against Palestine: East Jerusalem should become more and more Jewish . Tagesanzeiger.ch, August 21, 2010.
  4. ↑ The Demographic Cleanup of Jerusalem . ( Memento of February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Le Monde diplomatique , February 9, 2007
  5. ↑ Review (PDF; 284 kB) at h-net.org
  6. ^ Andreas Kossert: Expulsion: Freske des Nightmare . In: Die Zeit , No. 26/2010; meeting