ethnic cleansing

The forced expulsion of one ethnic group by another to create a homogenous population, for example, of more than 2 million Muslims by Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-95. The term has also been used to describe the killing of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi in 1994, and for earlier mass exiles, as far back as the book of Exodus.

To further their aim of creating a Greater Serbia, Bosnian Serb forces compelled thousands of non-Serbs, Croats, and Muslims to abandon their homes, allowing Serb families from other parts of the former Yugoslavia to occupy them. Wholesale slaughter and other human-rights violations were also allegedly used to implement this policy, which created nearly 700,000 refugees. Croatian troops adopted an ethnic-cleansing policy in Krajina 1995, forcing as many as 150,000 Croatian Serbs to flee their homes after a successful government offensive to retake the region; widespread human-rights violations were reported.

Similar tactics were used by the Nazis against the Jews in World War II. More peaceful ethnic cleansing continued in 1996 after implementation of the Dayton Peace Accord as separate Muslim Croat and Serb statelets were formed in Bosnia.

Other examples of ethnic cleansing include the compulsory exchange in 1923 of populations between Greece and Turkey under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, which involved more than 500,000 people; and the separation of 8 million Germans from parts of Eastern Europe, such as Poland, after World War II.