Ethnic Cleansing- refers to various policies or practices aimed at the displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory in order to create a supposedly ethnically “pure” society. This term entered into usage in the early 1990s to describe events happening in the former Yugoslavia. Ethnic cleansing is defined as a crime against humanity in the International Criminal Court. Several parties have been accused of ethnic cleansing in the last century, including the Indonesian miltary in East Timor, the government of Botswana against the San of the Kalahari, the government of Canada against the First Nations and the residential schooling programs, the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe removing white farmers, in the former Yugoslavia, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Janjaweed Arabs and Muslim militias in Sudan against the African population of Darfur, the Shia and Sunni militias in Baghdad during the Iraqi civil war, during the partition of India, in Azerbaijan, the government of Niger deporting Arabs, and by Odinga’s supporters in Kenya.
