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How did the ICTY approach ethnic cleansing?
They did everything they could to encourage the idea that this was something very sinister that the Serbs had invented as a new tactic of war.
Was there any truth in this?
No. The Balkan conflicts, like most others, saw large numbers of people moving out of their homes. But there were many reasons for this.
What were these reasons?
In some cases, people were ordered to leave home by their own governments, sometimes for their safety, sometimes to generate news footage with guaranteed propaganda impact. Often people moved for their own safety, judging that they would be safer away from a war zone and/or on the territory under the control of their own compatriots. Others were finding it hard to feed themselves and went in search of something better.
But weren’t there mass expulsions which really were designed to remove people of one group?
Yes. A few were motivated by nationalistic feeling. The prime example was the 400,000 Krajina Serbs who were driven off the land they lived on for 400 years by the Croatian army. But in most instances the reasons were practical, not ideological. In Bosnia, for instance, many isolated communities eventually decided that they would be at less risk if they moved to areas where their own group was in the majority.
So what was ‘ethnic cleansing’?
A propaganda slogan which was quickly taken up by aid agencies and other NGOs, the media and – of course – many politicians.
Why didn’t the truth emerge?
Very few people even bothered to look for it. Political leaders bent on supranational control found it a useful ‘failing’ of national sovereignty. For journalists, it provided a perfect basis for endless campaigning stories. For progressives it was proof that old ideas were wrong and needed to be swept aside.