Population cleansing is the deliberate removal of a population with certain undesirable characteristics, such as its ethnicity ( ethnic cleansing), its

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

( religious cleansing), its

social group In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...

(

social cleansing Social cleansing ( es, limpieza social) is social group-based killing that consists of the elimination of members of society who are considered "undesirable", including, but not limited to, the homeless, criminals, street children, the elderly, th ...

), its social class, its ideological or political criteria ( political cleansing), etc. from certain territories.Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, ''Ethnic Cleansing'', Macmillan, 1999,
p. 3
/ref>Carrie Booth Walling, "The History and Politics of Ethnic Cleansing", In: Throughout antiquity, population cleansing was largely motivated by economic and political factors, although ethnic factors occasionally played a role. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff attributes the earliest known example of cleansing as a state policy to

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...

Assurnasirpal II Ashur-nasir-pal II (transliteration: ''Aššur-nāṣir-apli'', meaning " Ashur is guardian of the heir") was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC. During his reign he embarked ...

and

Assurbanipal Ashurbanipal ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning " Ashur is the creator of the heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria. Inheriting the throne a ...

resettled millions of people from the conquered territories in order to crush the resistance. Usually upper classes were resettled, rather than complete populations, because peasant and artisan masses usually lacked leadership to initiate revolts. He further gives a number of other cases in Chapter 1 "Cleansing: A Historical Overview" of his book. While discussing the case of

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

, Bell-Fialkoff singles out a special type of the elimination of a conquered

polis ''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...

, for which the Greeks had a special term: ''andrapodismos'' (from the word ἀνδράποδον, one taken in war and sold as a slaveHenry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexico
ἀνδράποδον
/ref>). Andrapodismos involved the destruction of a polis, killing all male adults and selling women and children into slavery. Other kinds of the elimination of a polis (with or without its destruction) involved removal of its whole population to another polis, dispersing over villages, or emigration of its population, possibly founding a polis elsewhere. Mogens Herman Hansen, "The Hellenic ''Polis''", In: A Comparative Study of Thirty City-state Cultures: An Investigation''
p. 150
/ref> Since ancient times, methods of cleansing varied from killing (

democide Democide is a term coined by American political scientist Rudolph Rummel to describe "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high ...

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

) to forced

population transfer Population transfer or resettlement is a type of mass migration, often imposed by state policy or international authority and most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion but also due to economic development. Banishment or exile is ...

, to forced emigration.

References

Euphemisms Forced migration Human rights abuses Persecution Violence {{Humanrights-stub

See also

References