12 Facts About Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous.

Many instances of ethnic cleansing have occurred throughout history; the term was first used by the perpetrators as a euphemism during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.

At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory.

The gross human rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under public international law of crimes against humanity and in certain circumstances genocide.

Ethnic cleansing argues that murderous ethnic cleansing is due to the rise of nationalism, which associates citizenship with a specific ethnic group.

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Ethnic cleansing hostility appears where ethnicity overshadows social classes as the primordial system of social stratification.

The perpetration of murderous ethnic cleansing tends to occur in unstable geopolitical environments and in contexts of war.

Ethnic cleansing is part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group.

Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

William Schabas adds, "Ethnic cleansing is a warning sign of genocide to come.

Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied by efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, as well as through the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.

Mutual ethnic cleansing occurs when two groups commit ethnic cleansing against minority members of the other group within their own territories.