Ethnic Cleansing - Instances of Ethnic Cleansing - 21st Century

21st Century

• In 2002 Gujarat, India violence was a series of incidents including the Godhra train burning and the subsequent communal riots between Hindus and Muslims. Human Rights Watch criticised Indian government for failure to address resulting humanitarian condition of people, the "overwhelming majority of them Muslim," who fled their homes for relief camps in aftermath of the events; as well as Gujarat state administration for engaging in a cover-up of state's role in the massacres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence
• In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti Pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers. Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.

• From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Indonesian paramilitaries organized and armed by Indonesian military and police killed or expelled large numbers of civilians in East Timor. After the East Timorese people voted for independence in a 1999 referendum, Indonesian paramilitiaries retaliated, murdering some supporters of independence and levelling most towns. More than 200,000 people either fled or were forcibly taken to Indonesia before East Timor achieved full independence.

• Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. As of October 2005, the government has resumed its policy of forcing all Bushmen off their lands in the Game Reserve, using armed police and threats of violence or death. Many of the involuntarily displaced Bushmen live in squalid resettlement camps and some have resorted to prostitution and alcoholism, while about 250 others remain or have surreptitiously returned to the Kalahari to resume their independent lifestyle. "How can we continue to have Stone Age creatures in an age of computers?" asked Botswana's president Festus Mogae.

• Since 2003, Sudan has been accused of carrying out a campaign against several black ethnic groups in Darfur, in response to a rebellion by Africans alleging mistreatment. Sudanese irregular militia known as the Janjaweed and Sudanese military and police forces have killed an estimated 450,000, expelled around two million, and burned 800 villages. A July 14, 2007 article notes that in the past two months up to 75,000 Arabs from Chad and Niger crossed the border into Darfur. Most have been relocated by the Sudanese government to former villages of displaced non-Arab people. Some 450,000 have been killed and 2.5 million have now been forced to flee to refugee camps in Chad after their homes and villages were destroyed. Sudan refuses to allow their return, or to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur.

• In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and part of the northern West Bank. The 8,500 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip and 600 settlers in the northern West Bank were given a deadline to voluntarily leave their homes, and those who did so were given assistance. Settlers who had not left by the time the deadline expired were forcibly evicted from their homes by Israeli security forces. The settlers were paid compensation and resettled in Israel or Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

• Currently in the Iraq Civil War (2003 to present), entire neighborhoods in Baghdad are being ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni militias. Some areas are being evacuated by every member of a particular group due to lack of security, moving into new areas because of fear of reprisal killings. As of June 21, 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.

• Although Iraqi Christians represent less than 5% of the total Iraqi population, they make up 40% of the refugees now living in nearby countries, according to UNHCR. In the 16th century, Christians constituted half of Iraq's population. In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. But as the 2003 invasion has allowed the growth of militant Islamism, Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad. Furthermore, the Mandaean and Yazidi communities are at the risk of elimination due to the ongoing atrocities by Islamic extremists. A May 25, 2007 article notes that in the past 7 months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.

• In October 2006, Niger announced that it would deport Arabs living in the Diffa region of eastern Niger to Chad. This population numbered about 150,000. Nigerein government forces forcibly rounded up Arabs in preparation for deportation, during which two girls died, reportedly after fleeing government forces, and three women suffered miscarriages. Niger's government eventually suspended the plan.

• In 1950, the Karen had become the largest of 20 minority groups participating in an insurgency against the military dictatorship in Burma. The conflict continues as of 2008. In 2004, the BBC, citing aid agencies, estimates that up to 200,000 Karen have been driven from their homes during decades of war, with 120,000 more refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, living in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border. Many accuse the military government of Burma of ethnic cleansing. As a result of the ongoing war in minority group areas more than two million people have fled Burma to Thailand.

• Civil unrest in Kenya erupted in December 2007. By January 28, 2008, the death toll from the violence was at around 800. The United Nations estimated that as many as 600,000 people have been displaced. A government spokesman claimed that Odinga's supporters were "engaging in ethnic cleansing".

• The 2008 attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra began on February 3, 2008. Incidences of violence against North Indians and their property were reported in Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, Beed, Nashik, Amravati, Jalna and Latur. Nearly 25,000 North Indian workers fled Pune, and another 15,000 fled Nashik in the wake of the attacks.

• South Africa Ethnic Cleansing erupted on May 11, 2008 within three weeks 80 000 were displaced the death toll was 62, with 670 injured by the violence when South Africans ejected non-nationals in a nationwide ethnic cleansing/xenophobic outburst. The most affected foreigners have been Somalis, Ethiopians, Indians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans and Mozambiqueans. Local South Africans have also been caught up in the violence. Refugee camps a mistake Arvin Gupta, a senior UNHCR protection officer, said the UNHCR did not agree with the City of Cape Town that those displaced by the violence should be held at camps across the city. During the 2010 FIFA world cup, rumors were reported that xenophobic attacks will be commenced after the final. A few incidents occurred where foreign individuals were targeted, but the South African police claims that these attacks can not be classified as xenophobic attacks but rather regular criminal activity in the townships. Elements of the South African Army were sent into the affected townships to assist the police in keeping order and preventing continued attacks.

• In August 2008, the 2008 South Ossetia war broke out when Georgia launched a military offensive against South Ossetian separatists, leading to military intervention by Russia, during which Georgian forces were expelled from the separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. During the fighting, 15,000 ethnic Georgians living in South Ossetia were forced to flee to Georgia proper, and Ossetian militia burned their villages to prevent their return.

• The killings of hundreds of ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan during the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan riots resulting in the flight of thousands of Uzbek refugees to Uzbekistan have been called ethnic cleansing by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and international media.

• 2011 Libyan civil war. The killings, imprisonment and mass expulsions of African workers, migrants and native black Libyans in Libya by rebel forces who directly and indirectly accused them of being African mercenaries from neighboring countries of Chad, Niger or Sudan and pro-Gaddafi supporters. The majority African Libyan town of Tawergha, 36 kilometers south of Libya's third largest city Misrata was ethnically cleansed of its inhabitants by members of the Misrata Brigade as a retaliation against supposed Gaddafi supporters.

• Members of the Azusa 13 gang, associated with the Mexican Mafia, were accused of attempting a racial cleansing of African Americans in Azusa, California.

• 2012 Rakhine State riots. An estimated 90,000 people have been displaced in the recent sectarian violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Burma's western Rakhine State.

• Approximately 400,000 people have been displaced in the 2012 Assam ethnic violence between indigenous Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, India.