50 Ethnic cleansing in Europe

The Act for the Settlement of Ireland imposed penalties including death and land confiscation against participants and bystanders of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and subsequent unrest.

The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government during World War I. Although earlier massacres had occurred during the 19th century, and some sporadic mass murders of Armenians began in mid-1914, the start date of the genocide is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople, most of whom were eventually murdered.

The Decrees of the President of the Republic and the Constitutional Decrees of the President of the Republic, commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. They were issued by President Edvard Beneš from 21 July 1940 to 27 October 1945 and retroactively ratified by the Interim National Assembly of Czechoslovakia on 6 March 1946.

The Bosnian genocide refers to either the Srebrenica massacre or the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladić.

The Chetniks, a Yugoslav Royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed numerous war crimes during the Second World War, primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly Muslims and Croats, and against Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters. Several historians regard the Chetnik crimes against Muslims and Croats during this period as constituting genocide.

The Circassian genocide was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, forced migration, and expulsion of 800,000–1,500,000 Circassians from their homeland Circassia, which roughly encompassed the major part of the North Caucasus and the northeast shore of the Black Sea. It has been recorded that during the events, the Russian and Cossack forces used various brutal methods to entertain themselves, such as tearing the bellies of pregnant women and removing the baby inside, then feeding the babies to dogs. Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and justified their killing and use in scientific experiments. This occurred in the aftermath of the Russo-Circassian War in the second half of the 19th century. The displaced people were settled primarily to the Ottoman Empire.

The Deportation of the Balkars was the expulsion by the Soviet government of the entire Balkar population of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on March 8, 1944, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. All the 37,713 Balkars of the Caucasus were deported from their homeland in one day. The crime was a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s. Officially the deportation was a response to the Balkars' supposed collaboration with occupying German forces. Later, in 1989, the Soviet government declared the deportation illegal.

The Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, also known as Aardakh, Operation Lentil was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Vainakh populations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on February 23, 1944, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, as a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s.

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars or the Sürgünlik ("exile") was the ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars in 18–20 May 1944 carried out by the Soviet government, ordered by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet state security and secret police, acting on behalf of Joseph Stalin. Within three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport mostly women, children, the elderly, even Communists and members of the Red Army, to mostly the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of the several ethnicities who were encompassed by Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.

The Kalmyk deportations of 1943, codename Operation Ulusy was the Soviet deportation of more than 93,000 people of Kalmyk nationality, and non-Kalmyk women with Kalmyk husbands, on 28–31 December 1943. Families and individuals were forcibly relocated in cattle wagons to special settlements for forced labor in Siberia. Kalmyk women married to non-Kalmyk men were exempted from the deportations. The government's official reason for the deportation was an accusation of Axis collaboration during World War II based on the approximately 5,000 Kalmyks who fought in the Nazi-affiliated Kalmykian Cavalry Corps. The government refused to acknowledge that more than 23,000 Kalmyks served in the Red Army and fought against Axis forces at the same time.

The Deportation of the Karachays, codenamed Operation Seagull, was the forced transfer by the Soviet government of the entire Karachay population of the North Caucasus to Central Asia in November 1943, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Nearly 70,000 Karachays of the Caucasus were deported from their native land. The crime was a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s.

The Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was the forced transfer by the Soviet government of the entire Meskhetian Turk population from the Meskheti region of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic to Central Asia on 14 November 1944. During the deportation, between 92,307 and 94,955 Meskhetian Turks were forcibly removed from 212 villages. They were packed into cattle wagons and mostly sent to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Members of other ethnic groups were also deported during the operation, including Kurds and Hemshils, bringing the total to approximately 115,000 evicted people. They were placed in special settlements where they were assigned to forced labor. The deportation and harsh conditions in exile caused between 12,589 and 14,895 deaths, at a minimum.

Deportations of the Ingrian Finns were a series of mass deportations of the Ingrian Finnish population by Soviet authorities. Deportations took place from the late 1920s to the end of World War II. They were part of the Genocide of the Ingrian Finns.

The Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 is a book published by the Bulgarian academic Lyubomir Miletich in 1918, which describes the mass extermination and ethnic cleansing of the Bulgarian population in Eastern Thrace and Eastern Rhodope Mountains during the Second Balkan War and in a short period after it.

The East Prigorodny Conflict, also referred to as the Ossetian–Ingush Conflict, was an inter-ethnic conflict in the eastern part of the Prigorodny District in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, which started in 1989 and developed, in 1992, into a brief ethnic war between local Ingush and Ossetian paramilitary forces.

The ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany during World War II was carried out as part of a greater plan of forcible removal of the entire Polish populations from targeted regions of occupied Poland in preparation for the state-sponsored settlement of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche. The operation of mass expulsions from Zamojszczyzna region around the city of Zamość was carried out between November 1942 and March 1943 on direct order from Heinrich Himmler. It was preplanned by both Globocnik from Action Reinhard and Himmler, as the first stage of the eventual murderous ethnic cleansing ahead of projected Germanization of the entire General Government territory.

Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. Some scholars assert that record-keeping of the executions of political prisoners and ethnic minorities are neither reliable nor complete while others contend that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991 such as statements from emigres and other informants.

Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)

During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. In 1957, Walter Schlesinger discussed reasons for these actions, which reversed the effects of German eastward colonization and expansion: he concluded, "it was a devastating result of twelve years of National Socialist Eastern Policy." The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was proposed by Winston Churchill, in conjunction with the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers. On the other hand, Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski, in an interview for The Sunday Times on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of Lower Silesia, and parts of Pomerania, but he opposed the idea of expulsion. He wanted to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.

The Expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly half a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in the early 19th century and culminated in the racial policy of Nazi Germany that asserted the superiority of the Aryan race. The removal of Poles by Germany stemmed from historic ideas of expansionist nationalism. It was implemented at different levels and different stages by successive German governments. It ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive Nazi German operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from all territories of occupied Poland with the aim of their geopolitical Germanization between 1939 and 1944. The expulsions were justified by Nazi racial doctrine, which depicted Poles and other Slavs as racially inferior Untermenschen.

The Expulsion of the Moriscos was decreed by King Philip III of Spain on April 9, 1609. The Moriscos were descendants of Spain's Muslim population who had converted to Christianity because of coercion or by royal decree in the early 16th century. Since the Spanish were fighting wars in the Americas, feeling threatened by the Turks raiding along the Spanish coast and by two Morisco revolts in the century since Islam was outlawed in Spain, it seems that the expulsions were a reaction to an internal problem of the stretched Spanish Empire. Between 1609 through 1614, the Crown systematically expelled Moriscos through a number of decrees affecting Spain's various kingdoms, with varying levels of success.

The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the killing of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.

The Final Solution of the Czech Question was the Nazi German plan for the complete Germanization of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. German sociologist and anthropologist Karl Valentin Müller asserted that a large part of the Czech nation was racially Aryan and could be Germanized. This was in stark contrast to Germany's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. However, Müller asserted that the Germanization should take place without coercion; instead, he suggested a system of social incentives.

The Five Strumica Students refers to a group of five students on the age from 20-23, all born in Strumica that on August 13, 1951 were executed by authorities in Communist Yugoslavia. In the information report of the authorities it was stated that the group was planning to illegally cross the border to Greece, but their relatives claimed that they were killed because of ideas close to IMRO, an organization that fought for the independence of Macedonia. The case received international acclaim, and soon after in New Jersey, USA, and in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the pro-Bulgarian Macedonian Patriotic Organization set up its own structures called in Bulgarian: Струмишката петорка. At that time the Yugoslav authorities conducted a series of raids and executions to prevent the influence of the inherits of IMRO, this being one of them.

The foibe massacres, or simply the foibe, refers to mass killings both during and after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans against the local ethnic Italian population, mainly in Venezia Giulia, Istria and Dalmatia. The term refers to the victims who were often thrown alive into foibas.

The Generalplan Ost, abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German government's plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be undertaken in territories occupied by Germany during World War II. The plan was attempted during the war, resulting indirectly and directly in the deaths of millions by shootings, starvation, disease, extermination through labor, and genocide. But its full implementation was not considered practicable during the major military operations, and was prevented by Germany's defeat.

The Genocide of the Serbs was the systematic persecution of Serbs which was committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.

Ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia was a mass expulsion of ethnic Georgians conducted in South Ossetia and other territories occupied by Russian and South Ossetian forces, which happened during and after the 2008 Russia–Georgia war.

The Great Gypsy Round-up, also known as the general imprisonment of the gypsies, was a raid authorized and organized by the Spanish Monarchy that led to the arrest of all gypsies (Romani) in the region, and their imprisonment in labor camps. The raid was approved by the King Ferdinand VI of Spain, and organized by the Marquis of Ensenada, and set in motion simultaneously across Spain on July 30, 1749.

The Greek genocide, including the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish national movement against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire and included massacres, forced conversion to Islam, forced deportations involving death marches, expulsions, summary execution, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia is a term which is primarily used in reference to the genocide of Jews, but sometimes, it is also used in reference to the genocide of Serbs and Romani (Porajmos), within the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state which existed during World War II, was led by the Ustaše regime, and ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia which included most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia). Of the 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH in 1941, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that more than 30,000 were killed. Of these, 6,200 were shipped to Nazi Germany and the rest of them were killed in the ISC, the vast majority were killed in Ustaše-run concentration camps, such as Jasenovac. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Europe who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of killing Jews and members of other ethnic groups.

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through work in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.

Identity cleansing is defined as "confiscation of personal identification, passports, and other such documents in order to make it difficult or impossible for those driven out to return".

Italianization is the spread of Italian culture, language and identity by way of integration or assimilation.

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started in February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) from 24 March 1999.

The Law for the Protection of Macedonian National Honour was a statute passed by the government of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia at the end of 1944. The Presidium of Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) established a special court for the implementation of this law, which came into effect in 1945. This decision was taken at the second session of this assembly on 28–31 December 1944.

The Michniów massacre occurred on 12–13 July 1943 in the village of Michniów during German occupation of Poland when approximately 204 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Ordnungspolizei, SS.

The Mountain Wreath is a poem and a play written by Prince-Bishop and poet Petar II Petrović-Njegoš.

Operation Vistula was a codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of the Ukrainian minority as well as Boykos and Lemkos from the south-eastern provinces of post-war Poland, to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country. The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities with the aim of removing material support and assistance to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued its guerilla activities until 1947 in both Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution. Operation Vistula effectively brought an end to the hostilities.

On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal signed the decree of expulsion of Jews and Muslims to take effect by the end of October of the next year.

The population exchange between Bulgaria and Romania was a population exchange carried out in 1940 after the transfer of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria by Romania. It involved 103,711 Romanians, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians living in Southern Dobruja and 62,278 Bulgarians from Northern Dobruja. After this operation, the application of a population exchange in other cases such as Transylvania was considered.

Population transfer in the Soviet Union was the forced transfer of various groups from the 1930s up to the 1950s ordered by Joseph Stalin. It may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories. Dekulakization marked the first time that an entire class was deported, whereas the deportation of the Soviet Koreans in 1937 marked the first instance of an ethnic deportation of an entire nationality.

The Seyfo or Sayfo also known as the Assyrian genocide was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire and those in neighbouring Persia by Ottoman troops during the First World War. Considered a genocide by several scholars, it occurred concurrently with the Armenian and Greek genocides.

The Sicilian Vespers was a successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out at Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king Charles I, who had ruled the Kingdom of Sicily since 1266. Within six weeks, approximately 13,000 French men and women were slain by the rebels, and the government of Charles lost control of the island. This began the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

The Siege of Buda (1686) was fought between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire, as part of the follow-up campaign in Hungary after the Battle of Vienna. The Holy League took Buda after a long siege.

The Siege of Tripolitsa or the Fall of Tripolitsa to revolutionary Greek forces in the summer of 1821 marked an early victory in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, which had begun earlier in that year.

The Sochy massacre occurred on 1 June 1943 in the village of Sochy, Lublin Voivodeship in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship during German occupation of Poland when approximately 181–200 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Ordnungspolizei, SS.

Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey is a book by Bruce Clark published in 2006 concerning the population exchange between Greece and Turkey which took place in the early 1920s, following the Treaty of Lausanne.

Operation Vrbas '92 was a military offensive undertaken by the Army of Republika Srpska in June–October 1992, during the Bosnian War. The goal of the operation was the destruction of a salient around the central Bosnian town of Jajce, which was held by the Croatian Defence Council and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The intensity of fighting varied considerably and involved several major VRS offensive efforts interspersed by relative lulls in fighting. Jajce fell to the VRS on 29 October 1992, and the town's capture was followed by the destruction of all its mosques and Roman Catholic churches.

The Vyborg massacre was the killing of approximately 360-420 Russians in the town of Vyborg during the Finnish Civil War in April–May 1918. The massacre took place during and after the Battle of Vyborg as the White Guards captured the town from the Red Guards. At least half of the victims were Russian soldiers and military personnel. The slain were mainly men and young boys: nine out of ten were men fit for military service. The White Guards were "cleansing" the city of Red Guards, however, only a small minority of the killed Russian townsfolk were affiliated with the Finnish labour movement.