genocide

Firstly, Sudan’s civil wars are an example of genocide. Since the 1980s, there has been several civil wars between the Arab-Muslim dominated government in the North and other ethnicites in the South, West, and East. The government has been trying to convert Sudan from a multiethnic country to a single nationality that is tied to Muslim traditions, but are met with resistence from black Christians and animist ethnicities. The North-South war between 1983 and 2005 resulted in about 1.9 million deaths, and as a result, Sudan was split into Sudan and Southern Sudan. However, that caused more violence because boundaries were difficult to agree on between these two countries.

Furthermore, in Sudan’s westernmost region, there is a place named Darfur where an ethnic war took place. In 2003, Darfur’s black Africans launched a rebellion against the discrimination and neglect that they faced from the national government, which primarily consisted of Arab Muslims. However, marauding Arab nomads, called janjaweed, killed many of Darfur’s black population with the help of the Sudanese government; in the end, about 480,000 people were killed, with most being civilians, and about 2.8 million people in that region are forced to live in dire conditions, with refugee camps and the harsh desert weather.

ethnic cleansing

Myanmar’s killing of Rohingya Muslims is one of the most infamous examples of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar, a largely Buddhist country, used its army to target Rohingya Muslims in 2017, making them flee across the borders into Bangladesh. At the start of 2017, there were about 1 million Rohingya Muslims, making them the largest Muslim population in Myanmar-- they have their own language and culture, and claim to be descendents of Arabs who used to live in what is now Myanmar. However, as the ethnic cleansing continued, the numbers began to dwindle, and discrimination continued; Myanmar denied them citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census. In 2017, thousands of people were killed, and Rohingya villages were burned to “clear out” the area. Myanmar’s northern Rakhine province is still home to about ½ million Rohingya Muslims, and situations became more dire as Bangladesh stopped accepting those who were fleeing across the border. Many Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar still face violence by the army, though they deny any accusations of genocide, and many others remain displaced in Bangladesh, unable to return.

Another infamous example of ethnic cleansing is the Native American tribes that were exterminated when foreigners came to the United States (U.S.). When Americans began exploring and settling toward the west, Native Americans were forced to move further westward. As white traders and settlers moved across the Plains region, they brought commercial goods (like knives and kettles), guns, and diseases. These guns and diseases killed many Native Americans, and when these traders and hunters nearly exterminated the area’s buffalo herds, there was no way for the Native Americans to obtain food. With its population dying and no food available, Native Americans were forced onto government reservations in order to survive, and they were stripped of their previous way of life and culture. While they were being forced onto the reserves, many were killed, and some tribes died out; there are only a few remaining reserves with Native Americans, and their cultures and languages are still dying.

The last example of ethnic violence is the balkanization of Yugoslavia. Balkanization refers to the division of a multinational state into smaller, ethnically homogeneous entities due to ethnic conflicts. From 1919 to the 1990s, Yugoslavia was one country consisting of 19 distinct ethnicities, and the power of the Soviet Union held these ethnicities together. However, when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Yugoslavia fell apart as well. The 19 different ethnic groups created different countries of their own, and places like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro are all a result of this balkanization. Some break-ups were peaceful, because ethnic groups were split by geographic boundaries. In other cases, it was violent due to the mixed ethnicities in the same area. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnic divisions and intervention by Yugoslavia and Croatia led to fighting between Serbs, Croatians, and Bosniaks over important villages and roads. Between 1992 and 1995, Bosnian Serbs and Serbian paramilitary groups, which are unofficial forces that are organized similarly to a military force, conducted a 1400-day siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, to break Muslim resistance. In this 1400-day siege, over 10,000 people were killed, with about 1,500 of them being children. After the balkanization, each ethnicity and its newly formed country was trying to exterminate the other ethnicities, and many were killed in this brutal ethnic conflict.