Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
At a glance:
- Series: Magill’s Guide to Military History
- Categories: Government and Politics, Military History, Terrorism
- Subcategories: Race, Ethnicity, Racism, Civil Rights, Minority Rights, Minorities, Murder, Homicide, Execution, Assassination, Massacres, Genocide, Torture
- Curriculum: Worldwide
A term coined during World War II (1939-1945) by Raphael Lemkin in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), genocide denotes racially or ethnically motivated mass murder. Ethnic cleansing, a more recent but related term, refers to the expulsion—through rape, harassment, roundups, murder, police and military violence, or a combination of all of these—of a hated racial or ethnic group. Many groups—including the Armenians, Jews, and Kurds—have been victims of ethnic cleansing for centuries. Genocide is also an ancient occurrence. In 146 b.c.e., the Romans put the city of...
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