Reply to Ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe - when will the United Nations declare this a genocide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ethnic cleansing and genocide are not the same thing.[/quote]

For legal purposes neither is the designation crimes against humanity.

It is interesting (in a grim horrific way)  that Zelensky refers to the Russian atrocities as genocide - I don’t understand how that can be the right legal framework since Ukrainians have very similar ethnic backgrounds to the majority of Russians. The Russians are referring to their atrocities as ethnic cleansing of Nazis (so sick).

I don’t think Russia has ratified the international agreement on war crimes that gets prosecuted in Den Hague. Even if they issue an international arrest warrant for Putin as a war criminal, I am not sure how they would ever extract him from Russia.

The Kremlin clearly has no regard for UN agreements or basic human rights. However, I hope the world will find a good way to hold them accountable for all these barbaric war crimes.[/quote]

Sure — although it is possible to perpetrate genocide against the same ethnicity as your own. My understanding is the term “genocide” was coined to describe the Holocaust. Of course, the Nazis murdered people who were also of German descent, in addition to Ashkenazi Jews, Slavs, Poles, etc.

The term “genocide” simply means the attempted extermination of a people in whole or part. Of course, Hitler did not consider any of the people he killed to be the same ethnicity as him, but the reality is that many of them were.

To your point about legality: I think the reason Zelensky is using the term “genocide” is because he’s trying to get the UN to term the events “genocide.” If they do so, my understanding is that there are legal ramifications. I don’t think the same holds true for ethnic cleansing, which is technically the forced resettlement of a people with the aim of making a territory “ethnically homogeneous.”  [/quote]

According to the UN, the "people" can be a "national group":

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,[/quote]

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