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. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.[2][3][4] It constitutes a crime against humanity and may also fall under the Genocide Convention, even as ethnic cleansing has no legal definition under international criminal law.[2][5][6]

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural
Attributes Age Disability Genetics Hair color Hair texture Height Looks Size Language Race / Ethnicity Nordicism Skin color Rank Caste Class Religion Sex Sexual orientation
Social Acephobia Arophobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-drug addicts Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Cronyism Elitism Ephebiphobia Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Sectarianism Supremacism Black White Transphobia Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Ahmadiyya Atheism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Catholicism Christianity post–Cold War era Druze Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Jehovah's Witnesses Judaism Persecution LDS or Mormon Neopaganism non-Muslims Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Copts Protestantism Rastafari Sikhs Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national African Afghan Albanian American Arab Armenian Australian Austrian Azerbaijani Bosnian Brazilian British Canadian Catalan Chechen Chilean Chinese Croat English Filipino Finnish French Fulani Georgian German Greek Haitian Hazara Hispanic Hungarian Igbo Indian Canadian and US indigenous peoples Indonesian Iranian Irish Israeli Italian Japanese Jewish Khmer Korean Kurdish Lithuanian Malay Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Montenegrin Muhajirs Pakistani Palestinian Pashtun Polish Quebec Romani Romanian Russian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Tatar Thai Tibetan Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese
Manifestations Blood libel Bullying online LGBT Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog-whistle politics Eliminationism Economic Education Employment Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime LGBT Hate group Hate speech online Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Infantilization Language minoritization Lavender scare Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Persecution Pogrom Purge Red Scare Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sex-selective abortion Slavery Slut-shaming Violence against transgender people Victimisation Violence against men Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory White power music Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Babel Proclamation Blood purity Blood quantum Citizen, speak Turkish! Crime of apartheid Dialect card Disabilities Catholic Jewish Environmental racism Ethnocracy Ethnopluralism Gender pay gap Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Israel and apartheid Jewish quota Jim Crow laws Ketuanan Melayu Article 153 Kinder der Landstrasse Law for Protection of the Nation McCarthyism MSM blood donation restrictions Nonpersons Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) Nuremberg Laws One-drop rule Racial quota Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Sodomy law State atheism State religion Symbole Ugly law Vergonha Voter suppression Welsh Not White Australia policy
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity training Empowerment Environmental justice Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex rights LGBT rights Masculism Multiculturalism Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Bias Dehumanization Go back to where you came from Oppression Internalized Power distance Prejudice Reverse discrimination Social exclusion Social stigma Stereotype threat Civil liberties Diversity Intersectionality Multiculturalism Polyculturalism Political correctness White privilege Racial bias in criminal news (US) Racism by country Reverse racism The talk (US) Woke (US) Amatonormativity Gender roles Heteronormativity Male privilege Masculism Second-generation gender bias Medical model of disability autism Neurodiversity Social model of disability Allophilia Ethnic penalty Oikophobia Christian privilege Religious intolerance Eugenics Net bias Snobbery Speciesism Police brutality Prisoner abuse
v t e

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. Professor Ilan Pappé developed it to make sense of the Palestinian Nakba. In his book the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappé provides a clear description of the expulsion of more than 700.000 Palestinians from their lands and homes and the destruction of the Palestinian society by the Israeli settler regime. His book also explains the mystery of denying the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the erasure of this crime from the global public memory. Despite its euphemistic character and its origin in the language of the perpetrators, 'ethnic cleansing' is now the widely accepted scholarly term used to describe the systematic and violent removal of undesired ethnic groups from a given territory.}}

Since then, the term has gained widespread acceptance due to journalism and the media's heightened use of the term in its generic meaning.[7]