Personal Reflection By Brittany Lajoie

Ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia was a very tragic moment that should have been avoided especially after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that "ethnic cleansing' was no longer going to happen due to this declaration. Obviously the tragic events of World War 2 and the Holocaust had not as much of an effect on the world and human rights for this to be happening again in the early 1990's. Ethnic cleansing took place in Yugoslavia because there were many different ethnic groups and each group was trying to over power the other. This event is very much like the Holocaust. Hitler wanted a "pure" German society so any other ethnic races should removed, taken out of society. Hitler referred to anyone who was not a "pure" German as a "verman", as in a posion that would destroy society. The Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia both clearly violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was a tragic event in our history.

The ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia with out a doubt denied the point of Human Rights. For example the Croatians group did some pretty drastic things to move out the Serbs. Some of the things they did were seeing them as lower people, removal of their rights, and removing them and giving them unnecessary punishment. Yugoslavia was breaking apart with all this cruelty and discrimination against different ethnicities. The rights of humanism were clearly denied, not only by the example of Croatia that I just gave you but in so many ways through out Yugoslavia.

I feel the government is surely to blame for the ethnic cleansing that happened in former Yugoslavia. Once the Soviet Union broke up, the Siberian government was able to use its plan to rule the whole country of Yugoslavia. This act allowed Serbians to continuously make attacks against the Muslims, Croatians, and Bosnians as they tried to keep their faith to rule the country. I think it is cruel and disgusting that people would try to hurt people of there own kind. I thought that after people learned the devastation Hitler caused this type of event would no happen again but apparently the message wasn’t strong enough. The Serbian government clearly disobeyed the Declaration of Human rights and they were surely wrong.

Ethnic Cleansing in former Yugoslavia has a lot of similarities with the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a very harsh time in Germany. The Holocaust was used to mistreat the Jews, homosexuals and other groups during World War 2. They did cruel and unusual punishment to these groups and killed thousands and thousands of people. Basically the holocaust got rid of any person who was not a "pure" German, kind of like how the Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse former Yugoslavia. The Serbian people had many of the same practices the Germans did to the Jews. One thing both groups did was create concentration camps. The only real diffrence these countries had when it cam to ethnic cleansing was 1 race. In Germany there was one race pretty much and any other race was known as "verman", where as in Yugoslavia there were many diffrent races trying to rule over former Yugoslavia. All in all both countries were wrong for doing what they did.

United Nations was defiantly not helpful in the efforts to end the killings that were taking place in Yugoslavia. The United Nations Protective Force went into Yugoslavia and tried to keep peace but was not allowed to use any violence to do so the violence continued. The only good thing the UN did was the set up of the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia.