Self-determination, dissent, and the problem of population transfers

[Extract]
Many of the major self-determination movements of the twentieth century did
not go smoothly, but resulted in forced or semiforced transfers of groups of
people from one country to another. Famous examples include the compulsory
“population exchange” between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the population
transfers that accompanied the independence of India and its split with Pakistan in 1947, and the expulsion of most of the Palestinian population from the
area that became Israel after 1948. Somewhat lesser-known examples include
the expulsion of ethnic Georgians from Abkhazia and (more recently) South
Ossetia, with the help of Russia, and the exchange of populations between
Armenia and Azerbaijan in relation to the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, as well as the continuing slow-motion transfer of Serbs from Kosovo to Serbia. This last example, in particular, helps highlight the connection, in many historical instances, between population transfers and so-called “ethnic
cleansing.”