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Background
The violation of human rights due to ethnic differences
has occurred throughout the world. In some cases,
it is a minority being oppressed by a majority, other
times, it is two groups fighting for the same resources
or land. Whatever the problem, violations of human
rights based upon ethnic background have increasingly
become the focus of the world.
Irish Potato
Famine
Great Britain had been in control of Ireland
since the mid 17th century. Under British
control, Irish farmers grew wheat and oats for export to
England. The Irish grew potato crops for
domestic use. In 1845, disease destroyed
most of the potato crop. Even though the Irish were
facing a great famine, Great Britain refused to allow
them to keep enough of their export crops to survive,
and as a result over 1 million Irish died of
starvation or disease,
while millions of others migrated to the United
States.
Stalin &
the Soviet Union
Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union
after the death of Lenin. He setup a totalitarian
state where his one party government attempted to
control every aspect of their people's lives. In
the late 1920s, he started a policy called
Russification, which was to transform the various
ethnic groups in the Soviet Union into good
Russians. This policy promoted Russian language,
culture, and history above all
others. He forbade the use other cultural practices
and languages, and often denied non Russians many
basic human rights. During
the late 1930s, Stalin set out to eliminate all
opposition to his rule. He imprisoned or executed
millions of people, many of them prominent figures from
the ethnic republics. As a result, many ethnic
groups were denied their freedom, culture, and religion
until the collapse of the Soviet union in the early
1990s.
Tribalism
Africa was controlled by Europe to provide raw materials and new
markets for industrialized goods. This period, known as Imperialism, had a
negative effect on African culture and did not
completely end until after World War II. A major effect
of Imperialism on Africa is tribalism. When
the Europeans took control, they redrew Africa's boundaries
to suit themselves. They had little regard for the
tribal boundaries already in place.
When Imperialism ended, many
newly independent countries, using the European  boundaries,
found themselves with many different ethnic
groups within their borders. This resulted
in violence, civil war, and a lack
of political, social, and economic unity in many African
nations. An example of this is Nigeria.
During the 1960s, Nigeria experienced a civil war as the
Ibo, a minority ethnic group, attempted to gain
independence after the massacre of 20,000 of their
people. By the end of the war, over a million
people had died as a result of war and starvation.
Another example of tribalism
leading to gross human rights violations is the civil
war
in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi.
Tribal rivalries had existed for years between these
groups, often leading to violence since
independence. In 1994, the United Nations
had concluded a peace agreement to end the violence in
their country. Unfortunately, it was short
lived. The Hutu dominated Rwandan army initiated a
genocide against the Tutsi, killing more than a million
of them in under a year. This was ended when a
Tutsi rebel army seized the government. Since this
time, UN Peacekeeping forces have worked to end the
violence, with little success.
Balkans
Yugoslavia was created at the
end of World War I. It contained various ethnic
and religious groups. After World War II, this
area was dominated by the Soviet Union. After the
fall of communism, the various ethnic and religious
groups, including the Orthodox Christian Serbs,
the Roman Catholic Croats, the Muslim
Albanians, and others, attempted to separate from
Yugoslavia and form their own nations. The nations of Croatia,
Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina all
gained independence at this time.
However, this independence came at a price. War
and ethnic violence have devastated this
once united country. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, many
non Serbs were either killed or forced out of the
country by Serb forces. This policy was called Ethnic
Cleansing. Gross violations of human rights
occurred, such as the systematic rape  of
non Serb women, and the widespread use of terrorism and
death.
The Yugoslav army, under the
guidance of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosovic,
fought to keep non-Serbs from breaking away from
Yugoslavia. During the 1990s, he used his army to terrorize
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who were
asking for self rule. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) finally put a stop to this
violence, and Milosovic has since been arrested and
awaits trial for war crimes. The former Yugoslavia
continues to face many problems regarding ethnic strife.
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