Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied with efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship. Although ethnic cleansing has occurred long through history, the term was initially used by the perpetrators during the Yugoslav Wars and cited in this context as a euphemism akin to that of Nazi Germany's " Final Solution ", by the s, and gained widespread acceptance due to journalism and the media's heightened use of the term in its generic meaning.
An antecedent to the term is the Greek word andrapodismos Greek: This process was repeated on an even larger scale in —41, involving many other groups suspected of disloyalty towards the Soviet Union.
After the beginning of the invasion of the USSR, [ clarification needed ] he concluded: It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War — The first recorded mention of its use in the Western media can be traced back to an article in The New York Times dated 15 April , in a quote by an anonymous Western diplomat.
Synonyms include ethnic purification. The Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution defined ethnic cleansing as "a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas".
Those practices constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes. Furthermore, such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group".
