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Mass crimes against humanity and genocides
The term "ethnic cleansing:" Genocide-lite,
when you don't care enough to stop the bloodshed
Sponsored link.
Quotation:
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" 'Ethnic cleansing' just did not seem to be hitting
the mark ... We queried New York if ... Rwanda could be labeled
genocide ... Little did I realize the storm of controversy
this term would invoke ... in the capitals of the world. To me it
[genocide] seemed an accurate label at last. ..." Roméo Dallaire when
stationed in Rwanda during the genocide 0f 1994 when almost a million people
were slaughtered. 15 |
A term sometimes used for Genocide-lite: "Ethnic cleansing:"
The term "ethnic cleansing" was first commonly used to refer to the genocide
organized during the early 1990s by Serbian Orthodox Christians in Bosnia Herzegovina.
Their victims were primarily Muslims.
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Although that genocide was obviously
based on religious hatred and intolerance, it was called an "ethnic"
problem.
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Although it
involved genocide, it was referred to as "cleansing" as if its victims were
merely politely requested to please move to a different location. |
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The "cleansing" part of the term might imply to some that the victims
are in some way dirty, filthy and sub-human -- not worthy of continuing to
live. |
The term is still
frequently used to refer to all types of mass murder and massacres, including
the world's most serious current genocide in Darfur, Sudan (as of 2007).
Ethnic cleansing criminalized in international law:
According to Wikipedia:
"There is no formal legal definition of ethnic cleansing. However, ethnic
cleansing in the broad sense - the forcible deportation of a population - is
defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both [the]
International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The gross human-rights violations integral
to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes
falling under the definitions for genocide or crimes against humanity of the
statutes."
"The UN Commission of Experts (established pursuant to Security Council
Resolution 780) held that the practices associated with ethnic cleansing
'constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war
crimes. Furthermore ... such acts could also fall within the meaning of the
Genocide Convention'."
"The UN General Assembly condemned 'ethnic cleansing' and racial hatred in
a 1992 resolution." 2
Objections to the term "ethnic cleansing:"
As the UN experts suggested, ethnic cleansing as applied to the forcible
relocation of people groups, has a habit of quickly degenerating into mass
murder, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Author Andrew Bell-Fialkoff wrote in a 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs that "ethnic 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 an ‘undesirable’ population from a given territory due to
religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological
considerations, or a combination of these." 3
It is a very useful term. People and countries have used it in when a more accurate term
would be "genocide" to describe any large-scale mass murder of a national, ethnic, racial,
religious, or other identifiable group. Yet "ethnic cleansing" has no
generally agreed to legal definition, and places no mandated obligations on the
countries of the world. By avoiding the dreaded word "genocide," governments are not required to
replace their words with actions and actually reduce the slaughter.
In mid-2007, a team of researchers led by Rony Blum of the Genocide Prevention program,
Center for Injury Prevention, School of Public Health and Community Medicine,
at Hebrew University-Hadassah in Jerusalem, Israel wrote an article in the
European Journal of Public
Health asking that the term be abandoned.
1
Their article abstract at Oxford Journals states:
"Genocide has been the leading cause of preventable violent death
in the 20th–21st century, taking even more lives than war.
The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is used as a euphemism for genocide
despite it having no legal status. Like ‘Judenrein’ in Nazi
Medicine, it expropriates pseudo-medical terminology to justify
massacre. Use of the term dehumanizes the victims as sources of
filth and disease, propagates the reversed social ethics of the
perpetrators."
"Timelines for recent genocides:
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Bosnia, 1991–1996, 200 000; |
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Kosovo 1998–2000, 10 000 to 20 000; |
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Rwanda, 1994, 800 000; |
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Darfur 2002–2006, over 400 000) |
show that its use bears no relationship to death tolls scale
of atrocity. Bystanders’ use of the term 'ethnic cleansing'
signals the lack of will to stop genocide, resulting in huge
increases in deaths, and undermines international legal
obligations of acknowledging genocide. The term 'ethnic
cleansing' corrupts observation, interpretation, ethical judgment
and decision-making, thereby undermining the aim of public
health. Public health should lead the way in expunging the term
'ethnic cleansing' from official use. 'Ethnic cleansing' bleaches
the atrocities of genocide, leading to inaction in preventing
current and future genocides. 4
The "Judenrein" term used in that article is German for "clean of Jews". It
and "Judenfrei" (German for free of Jews) were terms used by the Nazis to refer to a geographical area that was determined
to be free of Jewish presence. According to Wikipedia, the word "Judenrein ...
demands that any trace of Jewish blood be removed as an impurity." 5 Achieving Judenrein throughout all of
Europe was one of the initial goals of Hitler's Third Reich. The article suggests that replacing the term
"ethnic cleansing" with "genocide" might have saved the lives of tens of
thousands of victims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and Darfur. Kim Petersen, co-editor of Dissident Voice wrote in mid-2007:
"... former UN secretary general Kofi Annan lamented countries’ continued
reluctance to honor their obligations under international law."
" 'We continue to lack the needed political will, as well as a common
vision of our responsibility in the face of massive violations of human
rights and humanitarian catastrophes occasioned by conflict.' Despite
massacres of 'near genocide proportions' in the DRC, Liberia and
elsewhere, 'our response to them has been hesitant and tardy'."
"What is needed is an independent international institution fully
empowered to investigate and identify genocide wherever it may occur in the
world and to make public its findings. The ghastly crimes of genocide must
not be left to the inexpertise of ad hoc bureaucracy."
"Countries must not shirk from genocide. They must speak out
unhesitatingly, with linguistic clarity and act with forthright remediation.
Elementary morality demands, though, that we confront, criticize, act
against, atone, and repent of our own great crimes first before we can
criticize, with any iota of moral integrity, the great crimes of others.
After all, linguistic honesty is more easily practiced when one has a clear
conscience." 6
Ethnic cleansing and this web site:During the first few months of 1995, the author of this essay grew
increasingly agitated at the evening newscasters' use of the term "ethnic
cleansing" while reporting daily atrocities in what was obviously a
religiously-based mass murder among Serbian Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and
Roman Catholics. The "cleansing" later grew into a full-scale genocide by the
Serbian Orthodox against the Muslims. From this agitation came a conviction that the root cause of that genocide
was religious intolerance. The Internet was in its infancy at that time, and
seemed to offer a mechanism by which a group with essentially no financial
resources could widely disseminate their views on the importance of religious tolerance. Thus this
website was born in the spring of 1995. It was about the 20,000th site to go
online. The Internet has since grown. As of 2007-NOV there were are about
60,000,000 active sites. 7
References used: The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
- Roméo Dallaire & Brent Beardsley, "Shake Hands With The Devil:
The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda," Carrol and Graf, (2004). Page
333.
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"November 2007 Web Server Survey," NetCraft, at:
http://news.netcraft.com/
- Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing," Foreign
Affairs, 1993-Summer.
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Rony Blum et al., " 'Ethnic cleansing' bleaches the atrocities of genocide,"
The European Journal of Public Health, 2007-MAY-18. Abstract available at:
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/ckm011v1.
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"Judenfrei," Wikipedia, 2007-NOV-27, at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/
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Kim Petersen, "Bleaching the Atrocities of Genocide. Linguistic Honesty is
Better with a Clear Conscience," Dissident Voice, 2007-JUN-07, at:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
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"November 2007 Web Server Survey," NetCraft, at:
http://news.netcraft.com/
Copyright © 2007 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally written: 2007-DEC-23
Latest update: 2007-DEC-23
Author: B.A. Robinson 
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