ethnic cleansing kosovo
Hayley Kaplan
Professor: Rhonda Lee-Ernst
Comp & Lit 2
October 7, 2013
Ethnic Cleansing Throughout History While some countries like America embrace the idea of a melting pot society, many regimes and dictators fear those who are different. Throughout history there have been many countries and governments who have attempted to clear out their country of those who are unlike them religiously, socially, and politically. In history this concept has taken the form of what is now known as ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing is when a government wants to get rid of a certain ethnic group in a country. The government’s main goal when conducting ethnic cleansing is to create an environment in which everyone is of the same religious, cultural, and political background. Many times throughout European and World history, there have been attempts to completely get rid of many different groups, such as, the Crusades, the Muslims, and the Holocaust. Up until the 1990’s the phrase Ethnic Cleansing had not been used by historians. It first became an accepted phrase in 1992, when there was an incident in Yugoslavia. After Bosnia declared it’s independent status, they tried to get rid of all the Bosnian Muslims and Croatian by killing, torturing, and sending them out of the country forcibly. “In his 1993 article "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing," published in the magazine "Foreign Affairs," Andrew Bell-Fialkoff writes that the aim of the Serbian campaign was "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 those." Using this definition, Bell-Fialkoff and many observers of history consider the aggressive displacement of Native Americans by European settlers in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries to be ethnic cleansing. By contrast, the removal of thousands of Africans from their native lands for the purpose of slavery would
Professor: Rhonda Lee-Ernst
Comp & Lit 2
October 7, 2013
Ethnic Cleansing Throughout History While some countries like America embrace the idea of a melting pot society, many regimes and dictators fear those who are different. Throughout history there have been many countries and governments who have attempted to clear out their country of those who are unlike them religiously, socially, and politically. In history this concept has taken the form of what is now known as ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing is when a government wants to get rid of a certain ethnic group in a country. The government’s main goal when conducting ethnic cleansing is to create an environment in which everyone is of the same religious, cultural, and political background. Many times throughout European and World history, there have been attempts to completely get rid of many different groups, such as, the Crusades, the Muslims, and the Holocaust. Up until the 1990’s the phrase Ethnic Cleansing had not been used by historians. It first became an accepted phrase in 1992, when there was an incident in Yugoslavia. After Bosnia declared it’s independent status, they tried to get rid of all the Bosnian Muslims and Croatian by killing, torturing, and sending them out of the country forcibly. “In his 1993 article "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing," published in the magazine "Foreign Affairs," Andrew Bell-Fialkoff writes that the aim of the Serbian campaign was "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 those." Using this definition, Bell-Fialkoff and many observers of history consider the aggressive displacement of Native Americans by European settlers in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries to be ethnic cleansing. By contrast, the removal of thousands of Africans from their native lands for the purpose of slavery would