View source for Population transfer

{{Mergefrom|Forced migration|date=August 2007}}
'''Population transfer''' is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion. [[Banishment]] or [[exile]] is a similar process, but is forcibly applied to individuals and groups.

Often the affected population is transferred by force to a distant region, perhaps not suited to their way of life, causing them substantial harm. In addition, the loss of all immovable property and, when forced, the loss of substantial amounts of movable property, is implied.

'''Population exchange''' is the transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time. Such exchanges have taken place several times in the 20th century, such as between [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|post-Ottoman Turkey and Greece]], and during the [[Partition of India#Population exchanges|partition of India and Pakistan]].

==Issues arising from population transfer==
According to political scientist [[Norman Finkelstein]] ''transfer'' was considered as an acceptable solution to the problems of ethnic conflict, up until around [[World War II]] and even a little afterward, in certain cases.  Transfer was considered a drastic but "often necessary" means to end an ethnic conflict or ethnic [[civil war]].<ref> [[Norman Finkelstein|Finkelstein, Norman]] ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd Ed'' (Verso, 2003) p.xiv - ''also'' [http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=10 An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict] </ref> The feasibility of population transfer was hugely increased by the creation of [[railroad]] networks from the mid-19th century.

Population transfer differs more than simply technically from individually-motivated [[human migration|migration]], though at times of [[list of wars|war]], the act of fleeing from danger or [[famine]] often blurs the differences. If a state can preserve the fiction that migrations are the result of innumerable "personal" decisions, then the state may be able to justify its stand that it has not been culpably involved. [[Jews]] who had actually signed over properties in Germany and Austria during [[Nazism]] found it nearly impossible to be reimbursed after World War II.

==Changing status in international law==
The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior to [[World War II]], a number of major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the [[League of Nations]].  Even the [[expulsion of Germans after World War II|expulsion of Germans from central and eastern Europe after World War II]] was sanctioned by the [[Potsdam Agreement]].  The tide started to turn when the Charter of the [[Nuremberg Trials]] of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity, and this opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century.  Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of states to make agreements which adversely affect them.

There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: ''Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law.''<ref>''Denver Journal of International Law and Policy'', Spring 2001, p116. </ref> No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

An interim report of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1993) says:<ref>http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/683f547c28ac785880256766004ecdef?OpenDocument </ref>
:''Historical cases reflect a now-foregone belief that population transfer may serve as an option for resolving various types of conflict, within a country or between countries. The agreement of recognized States may provide one criterion for the authorization of the final terms of conflict resolution. However, the cardinal principle of "voluntariness" is seldom satisfied, regardless of the objective of the transfer. For the transfer to comply with human rights standards as developed, prospective transferees must have an option to remain in their homes if they prefer.''
The same report warned of the difficulty of ensuring true voluntariness: ''some historical transfers did not call for forced or compulsory transfers, but included options for the affected populations. Nonetheless, the conditions attending the relevant treaties created strong moral, psychological and economic pressures to move.''

The final report of the Sub-Commission (1997)<ref>http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.Sub.2.1997.23.En?OpenDocument </ref> invoked a large number of legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravene international law unless they have the consent of both the moved population and the host population; moreover, that consent must be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure.

"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" is defined as a [[crime against humanity]] by the [[Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court]] (Article 7).<ref>http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/icc/statute/part-a.htm </ref> The [[International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia]] has put on trial, and in some cases has convicted, a number of politicians and military commanders indicted for forced deportations in that region.

Given the logistics of a forced "transfer," it is widely thought of as a euphemism for [[ethnic cleansing]]. In its most idealistic connotation, "transfer" is the mildest form of ethnic cleansing &mdash; a peaceful relocation of a compliant people from one area to another. [[nationalism|Nationalist]] agitation and its supportive [[propaganda]] are typical political tools by which public support is cultivated in favor of population transfer as a solution to conflict.

[[Timothy V. Waters]] argues in ''"On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing"'' that the expulsions of the German population east of the [[Oder-Neisse line]] the [[Sudetenland]] and elsewhere in Eastern Europe without legal redress has set a legal precedent that can permit future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.<ref>[http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4600&context=expresso Timothy V. Waters, ''On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing''], Paper 951, 2006, [[University of Mississippi]] School of Law. Retrieved on [[2006]], [[December 13|12-13]]</ref>

==Cases of population transfer==
===Ancient world===
In the ancient world, population transfer was the more humane alternative to putting all the males of a conquered territory to death and enslaving the women and children. The [[Babylonian captivity of Judah|Babylonian captivity]] of the elite of Jerusalem on three occasions in the [[6th century BCE]] was a population transfer.

===Tawantinsuyu===
The [[Inca]] were known to have dispersed conquered ethnic groups throughout their empire.  The intent was to break down traditional community ties and force the heterogeneous population to adopt the [[Kechwa]] language and culture.  Never fully successful in the [[pre-Columbian]] era, these [[totalitarian]] policies ironically experienced their greatest success when they were adopted as a pan-Andean identity defined against [[Spain|Spanish]] rule starting in the 16th century.

===Expulsion of Jews and Gypsies===
Expulsions of [[Jew]]s and of [[Roma people]] have been a tool of state control for centuries. The most famous such event was the [[Alhambra decree|expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain]] in [[1492]]. See [[Jewish refugees]], [[History of anti-Semitism]], and jewishgates.com<ref>http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=68 </ref> for more details. 

Another event, in [[1609]], was the final transfer of 300,000 Muslims out of Spain, after more than a century of Catholic trials, segregation, and religious restrictions. Most of the Spanish Muslims went to North Africa and to areas of [[Ottoman Empire]] control.<ref>http://www.webislam.com/numeros/2000/00_5/Articulos%2000_5/Andalusian_Reflections.htm </ref>

===France===
Two famous transfers connected with the [[history of France]] are the expulsion of the Jews, 1308, and of the [[Huguenot]]s who were declared illegal by the [[Edict of Fontainebleau]], [[1685]]. In both cases, the population was not forced out but rather their religion was declared illegal.

===United States: Native American relocations===
In the nineteenth century, the [[United States]] government removed a number of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] nations to federally owned and designated [[Indian reservation]]s. Starting in the 1830s with the [[Choctaw]] people, the policy known as [[Indian Removal]] relocated many nations living east of the [[Mississippi River]] to the [[Indian Territory]] in the west, a process that resulted in the "[[Trail of Tears]]" for the [[Cherokee]]s. Resistance to Indian Removal led to several violent conflicts, including the [[Second Seminole War]] in [[Florida]]. Later in the century, the establishment of reservations for the [[Plains Indians]] led to numerous [[Indian Wars]].

===Ottoman Empire===
====Population transfers in the classical period, 1300-1600====
The early [[Ottoman]] state utilized forced population transfers as a tool to reorder the ethnic and economic landscape of its territories. The term used in Ottoman documents and modern Turkish is surgun, from the verb surmek, to drive, as in to drive a flock of sheep.

Ottoman population transfers through the reign of [[Mehmet I]] (d. 1421) shuttled tribal Turkmen and Tatar groups from the state's Asiatic territories to the Balkans (Rumeli). Many of these groups were supported as paramilitary forces along the frontier with Christian Europe. Simultaneously, Christian communities were transported from newly conquered lands in the Balkans into Thrace and Anatolia. While these general flows back and forth across the Dardanelles continued, the reigns of [[Murad II]] (d. 1451) and [[Mehmet II]] (d. 1481) focused heavily on the demographic reorganization of the empire's urban centers. Murad II's conquest of Salonika was followed by its state-enforced settlement by Muslims from Yenice Vardar and Anatolia. Mehmet II's transfers focused on the re-population of the city of Istanbul following its conquest in 1453, transporting Christians, Muslims, and Jews into the new capital from across the empire.

Beginning in the reign of [[Bayezid II]] (d. 1512), transfers were used to manage the Ottoman state's difficulty with the heterodox kizilbas movement in eastern Anatolia. Forced relocation of the kizilbas continued until at least the end of the 16th century. Merchants, artisans, and scholars were transported to Istanbul from Tabriz and Cairo under [[Selim I]] (d. 1520). The state mandated Muslim immigration to Rhodes and Cyprus following their conquests in 1522 and 1571, respectively, and resettled [[Greek Cypriots]] on the Anatolia coast.

Knowledge of the Ottoman usage of surgun from the 17th through the 19th century is sketchy. It appears that the state did not utilize forced population transfers during this time to the extent that it did during its expansionist period.<ref>http://www.unm.edu/~phooper/thesis_condensed.pdf </ref>

====Balkan population exchanges, 1913====
{{details|Balkan Wars}}
After the exchanges in the [[Balkans]], forced population transfer was used by the Great Powers and later the [[League of Nations]] as a mechanism for increasing homogeneity in post-Ottoman Balkan states. A Norwegian diplomat working with the [[League of Nations]] as a [[High Commissioner for Refugees]] beginning 1919, proposed the idea of a forced population transfer modeled on the earlier post Balkan-war Greek-Bulgarian mandatory population transfer of [[Greeks]] in Bulgaria to Greece, and [[Bulgarians]] in Greece to Bulgaria.

====Armenian population====
The event known as the [[Armenian Genocide]] involved large scale one way population transfer, thus it must be mentioned here, but it involved and culminated in [[ethnic cleansing]] and [[Genocide]]. For more information see [[Armenian Genocide]].

The [[Armenians|Armenian]] population of the [[Ottoman Empire]] was deported and transferred in the years from 1915-1919. It was organised by the [[Young Turk]] Ottoman government and officially called ''[[tehcir]]'' (meaning "forced relocation", but it was translated into English as deportation or banishment—effectively what "tehcir" was in this context). These [[deportations]] led to the death of approximately 1.5 million Armenians, many of whom were deported to the Syrian deserts in inhumane death marches with [[atrocities|atrocious]] conditions. Consequently the Transfer of the Armenian population and associated events are considered [[Genocide]]. Thus the "population transfer" was not the actual goal of the deportations (this was the elimination of the Armenians), but it was the means of achieving this goal.

===Republic of Turkey===
=====Greece and Turkey: population exchanges, 1923=====
{{main|Population exchange between Greece and Turkey}}
The League of Nations moving the defined those to be mutually expelled as the "[[Islam in Greece|Muslim]] inhabitants of Greece" to Turkey and moving "the [[Greeks|Greek]] inhabitants of Turkey" to Greece. The plan met with fierce opposition in both countries and was condemned vigorously by a large number of countries.  Undeterred, Nansen worked with both Greece and Turkey to gain their acceptance of the proposed population exchange. About 1.5 million Greeks and half a million Muslims were moved from one side of the international border to the other.

Population transfer prevented further attacks on minorities in the respective states while Nansen was awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace. As a result of the transfers, the Muslim minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkey were much reduced.  Cyprus was not included in the Greco-Turkish population transfer of 1923 because it was under direct British control.

===Central Europe===
{{Main|Expulsion of Germans after World War II}}
After the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] divided [[Poland]] during [[World War II]], Germans deported Poles and Jews from [[Polish territories annexed by Nazi Germany]], while the [[Soviet Union]] deported Germans and Poles from areas of Eastern Poland, [[Kresy]]. 

From 1940 on Hitler tried to get resettle Germans from the areas where they constituted a minority (the Baltics, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe) into the [[Reichsgau Wartheland|Warthegau]] - the region around Poznan in present day Poland. For this reason he expelled the [[Poles]] and [[Jews]] who formed there the majority of the population. Before the war the [[Germans]] constituted 16% of the population in the area.

The [[Nazism|Nazis]] initially tried to press Jews to emigration. In Austria they succeeded in driving out most of the Jewish population. But increasing foreign resistance brought this plan to a virtual halt. Later on Jews were transferred to [[ghetto]]es and eventually to [[death camp]]s.

After World War II, when the [[Curzon line]] was implemented, members of all ethnic groups were transferred to their respective new territories (Poles to Poland, Ukrainians to Ukraine). The same applied to the [[Oder-Neisse line]], where German citizens were transferred to Germany. [[German exodus from Eastern Europe|Germans were expelled]] from areas annexed by the [[Soviet Union]] as well as territories such as the so-called [[Sudetenland]] of [[Czechoslovakia]] and [[Hungary]].

===Soviet Union===
{{main|Population transfer in the Soviet Union}}
Shortly before, during and immediately after [[World War II]], Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Over 1.5 million people were deported to [[Siberia]] and the [[Central Asian]] republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the [[invasion|invading]] Germans were cited as the main official reasons for the deportations, although an ambition to [[ethnic cleansing|ethnically cleanse]] the regions may have also been a factor. After the [[World War II|WWII]], the population of [[East Prussia]] was replaced by the Soviet one, mainly by [[Russians]].

===South East Europe===
In September 1940 with the return of Southern [[Dobruja]] (the [[Cadrilater]]) by [[Romania]] to [[Bulgaria]] under the [[Treaty of Craiova]], 80,000 Romanians were compelled to move north of the border, while 65,000 Bulgarians living in Northern [[Dobruja]] moved into Bulgaria.

During the [[Yugoslav wars]] of the [[1990s]], the breakup of [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] caused large population transfers, mostly involuntary. Because it was a conflict fueled by [[ethnic nationalism]], people of minority ethnicity generally fled towards regions where their ethnicity was in a majority.

The phenomenon of "[[ethnic cleansing]]" was first seen in [[Croatia]] but soon spread to [[Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnia]]. Since the [[Bosniaks|Bosnian Muslims]] had no immediate refuge, they were arguably hardest hit by the ethnic violence. United Nations tried to create ''safe areas'' for Muslim populations of eastern Bosnia but in cases such as the [[Srebrenica massacre]], the peacekeeping troops failed to protect the ''safe areas'' resulting in the massacre of thousands of Muslims. 

The [[Dayton Accords]] ended the war in [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], fixating the borders between the two warring parties roughly to the ones established by the autumn of 1995. One immediate result of the population transfer following the peace deal was a sharp decline in ethnic violence in the region.

See [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/overview/bosnia.htm Washington Post Balkan Report] for a summary of the conflict, and [http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/bosnia.htm FAS analysis of former Yugoslavia] for population ethnic distribution maps.

A massive and systematic deportation of [[Serbia]]'s [[Albanians]] took place during the [[Kosovo War]] of [[1999]], with around 800,000 Albanians (out of a population of about 1.5 million) forced to flee [[Kosovo]].  This was quickly reversed at the war's end, but thousands of Serbs were in turn forced to flee into [[Serbia proper]].

A number of commanders and politicians, notably Serbia and Yugoslavia's former president [[Slobodan Milošević]], were put on trial by the [[United Nations]]' [[International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia]] for a variety of [[war crime]]s, including deportations and genocide.

===Caucasia===
In the [[Caucasus|Caucasian]] region of the [[former Soviet Union]] the phenomenon of population transfer along ethnic lines has affected many thousands of individuals in [[Armenia]], [[Nagorno-Karabakh]] and [[Azerbaijan]] proper; from [[Abkhazia]], [[South Ossetia]] and [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]] proper; as well as from [[Chechnya]] and adjacent areas within [[Russia]].

===South Asia===
When [[British Raj|British India]] became independent after the [[Second World War]] its [[Muslim]] inhabitants formed their own state consisting of two non-contiguous territorial entities: [[East Pakistan|East]] and [[West Pakistan]]. In order to facilitate the creation of new states along [[religion|religious]] lines (as opposed to [[race|racial]] or [[language|linguistic]] lines) [[Partition_of_India#Independence_and_population_exchanges|population exchanges between India and Pakistan]] were implemented, at the expense of significant human suffering in the process. More than 5 million [[Hindu]]s moved from present-day Pakistan into present-day India, and more than 6 million [[Muslim]]s moved in the other direction.  A large number of people (more than a million by some estimates) died in the accompanying violence. 

On the [[Indian Ocean]] island of [[Diego Garcia]] between [[1967]] and [[1973]] the British Government forcibly removed 2000 [[Chagossians|Chagossian]] islanders to make way for a military base. Despite court judgments in their favour, they have not been allowed to return from their exile in [[Mauritius]], although there are signs that financial compensation along with an official apology is being considered by the British government.

===Middle East===
As the focus of all three of the major [[Abrahamic religions]] &mdash; [[Judaism]], [[Christianity]], and [[Islam]] &mdash; which have frequently been mutually antagonistic, the [[Middle East]] has suffered periodic population transfers motivated by religious beliefs.

Kuwait expelled 500,000 [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] Arabs during the [[Gulf War]] because of their support for Saddam Hussein's invasion. 

====Israel/Palestine====
{{main|Palestinian exodus|Jewish exodus from Arab lands}}
Although not part of an officially orchestrated population transfer, a parallel of population movements in opposite directions occurred at the time of the [[1948 Arab-Israeli War]] and during the following years. The majority of the [[Arab]] population of the area of what is now the [[State of Israel]] fled or was forced to leave in 1948-50. After the war, there was a large influx of [[Jew]]ish refugees as well as a smaller number of voluntary [[Zionist]] [[immigrants]] into the newly established state. The [[Palestinian exodus]] of between 420,000 and 910,000 during the [[1948 Arab-Israeli war]], was subsequently followed by the [[Jewish exodus from Arab lands]] numbering between 758,000 and 866,000. While two thirds of these "[[Arab Jews|Arab Jewish]]" refugees settled in Israel, the bulk of the Palestinian Arab refugees from the former [[British Mandate of Palestine]] ended up in the [[Gaza strip]],<ref>Between 1949 and 1967, the [[Gaza strip]] was under Egypt's rule</ref> [[Cisjordan]],<ref>Between 1949 and 1967, [[Cisjordan]] was under [[Jordan]]'s rule</ref> [[Jordan]], [[Syria]] and [[Lebanon]]. The cause of these population movements is hotly debated.

Although an actual population transfer between the Jews and the Arabs only took place around the period of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the idea of the transfer of Arabs from Palestine, usually to Iraq, had been on both the Zionist and non-Jewish agenda for about half a century beforehand.
Zionist leaders such as [[Theodor Herzl]], [[David Ben-Gurion]], [[Chaim Weizmann]] and many others would repeatedly put forward such transfer proposals, and they were often of a compulsory nature. The American Presidents [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[Herbert Hoover]] likewise made such proposals. Even Arab leaders and pro-Arab personalities came out in favour of such a transfer. One of the recommendations in the Report of the British [[Peel Commission]] in 1937 was for a transfer of Arabs from the area of the proposed Jewish state, and this even included a compulsory transfer from the Plains of Palestine. This recommendation was initially not objected to  by the British Government.<ref>Morris (2003), ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', chapter : The Idea of Transfer in Zionist Thinking</ref>

During August 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated all its [[Israeli settlement|settlers]] (10,000) from the [[Gaza Strip]] and northern [[West Bank]], areas occupied by Israel<ref>[[UN Security Council Resolution 446|Resolution 446]], [[UN Security Council Resolution 465|Resolution 465]], Resolution 484, among others</ref><ref>{{cite web| title = Applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem, and the other occupied Arab territories|publisher=[[United Nations]]| date = December 17, 2003| url = http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/97360ee7a29e68a085256df900723485/d6f5d7049734efff85256e1200677754| accessdate=2006-09-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory| publisher = [[International Court of Justice]]|date=July 9, 2004|url=http://domino.un.org/UNISPAl.NSF/85255e950050831085255e95004fa9c3/3740e39487a5428a85256ecc005e157a|accessdate=2006-09-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| title = Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention: statement by the International Committee of the Red Cross| publisher = [[International Committee of the Red Cross]]| date = December 5, 2001| url = http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList247/D86C9E662022D64E41256C6800366D55#2| accessdate=2006-09-27}}</ref>, as part of the [[Israel's unilateral disengagement plan|disengagement plan]].

==Other kinds of transfer==
A [[penal colony]] such as [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], [[Botany Bay]] or [[Devil's Island]] is a case-by-case transfer that may finally add up to a sizable population, but does not come under this heading. The movement of military POWs can be a case of transfer in cases where the numbers are large. (See [[forced march]], [[Bataan Death March]].)

==See also==
*[[Ethnic cleansing]]
*[[Deportation]]
*[[Slave trade]]
*[[Displaced person]]
*[[Political migration]]
*[[Population transfer in the Soviet Union]]
*[[Refugee]]
*[[Korematsu]]
*[[Villagization]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}
*{{cite book | author=Sonn, Tamara | title=A Brief History of Islam |publisher= Blackwell Publishing Limited| year=2004 | id= ISBN 1-4051-0900-9}}
*A. De Zayas, International Law and Mass Population Transfers, Harvard International Law Journal 207 (1975).

==External links==
* [http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/683f547c28ac785880256766004ecdef?OpenDocument UN Report] giving many details of historical population transfers and exchanges (continues at bottom of page)
* [http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.Sub.2.1997.23.En?OpenDocument Freedom of Movement - Human rights and population transfer] - UN report on legal status of population transfers
* [http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=68 Medieval Jewish expulsions from French territories]
* [http://www.conceptwizard.com/conen/conflict_2.html conceptwizard.com "History in a Nutshell"], the source of population transfer statistics in the Middle East
* [http://www.unm.edu/~phooper/thesis_condensed.pdf Forced population transfers in early Ottoman imperial strategy], a comparative thesis that treats the subject in some detail, and includes a general evaluation of the use of population transfers by states in the pre-modern period

[[Category:Forced migration]]
[[Category:Demography]]
[[Category:Population]]

[[et:Küüditamine]]
[[el:Ανταλλαγή πληθυσμών]]
[[eo:Transigo de loĝantaroj]]
[[he:טרנספר]]
[[fi:Pakkosiirto]]