Anyway here is the introduction of an article I recently found which might give some perspective, written by Jennifer Priest at London University, in a journal called Human Rights Quarterly (in 1998) -
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[The establishment of a legal precedent for ethnic cleansing] is a thoroughly bad and vicious solution [to the problem of national minorities] for which the world will pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come.
Lord Curzon
British Foreign Minister, 1923 1
It could not have been predicted when the first Sub-Commission [on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities] resolution on population transfer [or ethnic cleansing] was adopted in 1990 that this form of human rights abuse would become so central to conflicts and pressing political issues of which the international community is now seized.
A.S. Al-Khasawneh and R. Hatano
UN Special Rapporteurs, 1993 2
I. Introduction
In the early 1990s a new term entered the language of politics: ethnic cleansing. By 1997 that term was commonplace. It appeared regularly not only in media reports but also in the pronouncements of those international [End Page 817] and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with various ethnic conflicts around the globe--be they in the Balkans (Bosnia and Croatia), the Caucasus (Armenia and Azerbaijan), Africa (Somalia and Rwanda) or Asia (Cambodia). Seemingly, ethnic cleansing was a phenomenon of the post-Cold War era: that, at least, was the impression that one received from most writing on the subject--which as of 1997 remained primarily journalistic.
This impression, however, was misleading. In fact, forcibly moving populations defined by ethnicity (race, language, religion, culture, etc.) to secure a particular piece of territory--thereby cleansing that territory of a particular group--has been an instrument of nation-state creation for as long as homogeneous nation-states have been the ideal form of political organization. 3 Since Woodrow Wilson first hailed national self-determination as the organizing principle of the 1919 territorial settlement, 4 ethnic cleansing has affected millions of people around the world. 5 The following are but a few European examples: in the interwar period, 1.5 million Greeks were cleansed from Turkey, 6 400,000 Turks cleansed from Greece, 7 between 92,000 and 102,000 Bulgarians cleansed from Greece, 8 35,000 Greeks cleansed from Bulgaria, 9 67,000 Turks cleansed from Bulgaria 10 ; during World War II and its aftermath, 110,000 Romanians cleansed from Bulgaria, 11 62,000 Bulgarians cleansed from Romania, 12 1.2 million Poles [End Page 818] cleansed from areas incorporated by the German Reich, 13 700,000 Germans cleansed from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Italy and relocated into the Nazi Incorporated Territories of Western Poland, 14 6 million Jews cleansed from Nazi-occupied Europe and eventually exterminated, 15 600,000 Soviet citizens belonging to politically suspect ethnic groups (e.g., Chechens, Tatars, Pontic Greeks) cleansed from their historic homelands on Stalin's orders and relocated beyond the Urals, 16 14 million Germans cleansed from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania, 17 140,000 Italians cleansed from Yugoslavia, 18 31,000 Hungarians cleansed from Czechoslovakia, 19 33,000 Slovaks cleansed from Hungary; 20 since 1948, 45,000 Turkish Cypriots cleansed from Greek Cyprus, 21 160,000 Greek Cypriots cleansed from Turkish Cyprus, 22 more than 300,000 ethnic Turks cleansed from Bulgaria, 23 2.5 million people displaced as a result of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, many of whom were the victims of ethnic cleansing. 24 It should be emphasized that this list is not exhaustive.
Indeed, in the twentieth century so widespread was the practice of ethnic cleansing or forced population transfer (which is the older expression used to describe those practices associated with ethnic cleansing) and so far-reaching were its consequences that UN Special Rapporteurs A.S. Al-Khasawneh and R. Hatano in their 1993 report The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer offered the following observation: "As much as population transfer has prevailed as an instrument of State-craft in every age in recorded history, ours could be distinguished as the century of the displaced person." 25"
1. Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans 11-12 (1979) (quoting Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Minister from 1919 to 1924, a participant at the Lausanne Conference).
2. The Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, Including the Implantation of Settlers, U.N. ESCOR, Sub-Comm'n on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 45th Sess., Provisional Agenda Item 8, at 85, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1993/17 (1993) [hereinafter The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer].
3. While cujus regio ejus religio remained the legitimizing principle in international relations (that is, prior to 1919), there were of course numerous incidents of religious cleansing designed to create homogeneous religious populations within states. See Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing, 72-1 Foreign Aff. 110 (1993); see also Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights in Europe: From Westphalia to Helsinki, 23 Rev. Int'l Stud. 75 (1997).
4. Treaty Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, 28 June 1919, U.S.-The British Empire-Fr.-Italy-Japan-Belg.-Bol.-Braz.-P.R.C.-Cuba-Ecuador-Greece-Guat.-Haiti-The Hedjaz-Hond.-Liber.-Nicar.-Pan.-Peru-Pol.-Port.-Rom.-The Serb-Croat-Slovene State-Siam-Czecho-Slovakia-Uru.-Germany, 2 Bevans 43, reprinted in 1 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Treaties of Peace 1919-1923, at 3 (1924) (known as the Treaty of Versailles).
5. On 11 February 1918 Woodrow Wilson described national self-determination as "an imperative principle of action." See Alfred Cobban, The Nation State and National Self-Determination 53, 57-84 (1970). This thinking was later borne out both in Wilson's Fourteen Points of February 1918 and later in Article X of the League of Nations Covenant. See Wilson's Fourteen Point Speech of 8 Jan. 1918, 1 Foreign Relations of the United States 12ff (Supp. I 1918); League of Nations Covenant art. 10.
6. See Alfred de Zayas, International Law and Mass Population Transfers, 16 Harv. Int'l L.J. 207, 222-23 n.2 (1975).
7. See id.
8. See id.
9. See The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, supra note 2, at 28 ¶ 120; see also Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars 328 (1990).
10. See The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, supra note 2, at 29 ¶ 126.
11. See Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes 1917-1947, at 304 (1948).
12. See id.
13. See Bell-Fialkoff, supra note 3, at 114.
14. See id.
15. See id.
16. See id. at 115.
17. See id.
18. See Kulischer, supra note 11, at 303.
19. See Bell-Fialkoff, supra note 3, at 115.
20. See id.
21. See Anthony Parsons, From Cold War to Hot Peace: UN Interventions 1947-1995, at 178 (1995).
22. See id. at 178-79.
23. See Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict 159-60 (1991).
24. See Bell-Fialkoff, supra note 3, at 118.
25. The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, supra note 2, at 5.
