"Ethnic cleansing" is a Serb invention, and amounts to genocide.

Forcible expulsions of civilians are an unfortunate part of most (particularly civil) wars, and mass population exchanges are not uncommon in such cases (e.g., Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s, India and Pakistan in the 1940s, Greek exodus from Northern Cyprus in 1974). Here, Serbs were the first mass victims of this practice after Franjo Tudjman's ascent to power in Croatia (1990). As the war developed, all three sides engaged in it (many expulsions happened during Muslim-Croat fighting). Today, the number of Serb refugees surpasses that of the two other sides. Finally, while expulsions are no doubt deplorable, any analogy with systematic Nazi extermination is nonsense and belittles the essence of real genocide.

August 4, 1995. Bosnia.
Serbian refugies from Croatia.

"The 'ethnic cleansing' label, which is routinely used to describe Serb actions, is misleading as well as inflammatory. U.S. officials, aided by large portions of the Western news media, have sought to equate it with genocide. But as skeptics point out, what is going on in Bosnia cannot accurately be termed genocide. Daryl G. Press, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes that genocide has a very specific meaning: "the systematic annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group Instead of exterminating members of other ethnic groups, the Serb objective has generally been to expel them from certain territories as part of an effort to create a "Greater Serbia." Although that is certainly a loathsome practice-and is sometimes accompanied by acts of murder, rape, and other human rights violations-it does not constitute genocide. Press is correct when he concludes that 'the goal of the combatants in the former Yugoslavia is to drive the enemy from the land, not to capture and kill every man, woman and child.'"

"Contrary to the impression fostered by supporters of an American-led military intervention, ethnic cleansing itself is hardly a unique practice. American leaders and pundits should be especially circumspect about denouncing other countries for 'cleansing' territories of indigenous inhabitants."

"But one does not have to go back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - a period that apparently constitutes 'ancient history' in the minds of many Americans and, therefore, has no applicability to the Bosnian situation - to find pertinent examples of ethnic cleansing. One such incident occurred when the British colony of India was partitioned and granted independence in 1947 .

Millions of Hindus were expelled from the new Islamic nation of Pakistan, while millions of Muslims had to flee predominantly Hindu India. Nearly 250,000 people perished in the bloodshed that accompanied the partition.[...]

More recently, some two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots were driven from the northern portion of Cyprus when Turkish forces invaded and occupied nearly half of the island in 1974. Again, it is instructive to compare NATO's passive response to Ankara's actions with the alliance's periodic bouts of saber rattling about Serb policy in Croatia and Bosnia. There has never been the slightest consideration given to using military action against Turkey to restore the Greek Cypriots to their homes. The Serbs have a point when they contend that the United States and its allies employ a blatant double standard ."

"Colonel Segers also said that ethnic cleansing is anything but a Serbian speciality in this war. 'In Western Slavonia, the Croats burned down two thirds of Serbian houses in the first assault alone. An old man, a Serb, knocked on our mission's door one evening and asked us to come to his house where Croatian soldiers had just barged in. When we got there, it was too late: his 72year old wife laid dead on the threshold of their house which was set on fire' said Segers."

"As of this writing this Croatian operation appears to differ from Serbian actions around the U.N. safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa only in the degree of Western hand-wringing and CNN footage the latter have elicited. Ethnic cleansing evokes condemnation only when it is committed by Serbs, not against them."

"Prior to Serb refugees fleeing the Krajina, UNHCR statistics listed Bosnian refugee populations resulting from ethnic cleansing as comprising 36% Serb, 20% Croat, and 44% Muslim. At worst, these figures would show that the Serbs were responsible for approximately 64% of the problem, but there is no way to accurately account for Croat vs. Muslim violence which also bears some responsibility for these disturbing numbers. Any data which alleges to prove one side or the other committed such and such a percentage of the ethnic cleansing should immediately become suspect. "

"In the face what U.N. observers in Croatia call the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in the entire Balkan wars, where were the moralist who for years have been so loudly decrying the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims. Where were the cries for block the demand for arms, the call to action on behalf of today a pitiful victims. There were the columnists, the senators, the other posturors who excoriate the West for standing by when Bosnian Muslims are victimised and are silent when the victim of the day is Serb?"

"The Serbs of Krajina had every reason to fear falling under Croatian sovereignity again. And this week of course, their fear were borne out. The Croats shelled Serb villages and towns before advancing their armies, thereby terrorizing the poulation to flight. And once they fled, report U.N. observers in Croatia, refugees indiscriminately shot at.

Where are the protests? Not only are there no protests, but the government of the United States (and Germany, Croatian's onetime patron) has quietly applauded the Croatian blitzkrieg."

"There is either one moral standard regarding ethnic cleansing or none. There cannot be two."