Forced migration The twentieth century was "the century of genocides." In a century, there were four genocides that have prevailed in their wake thousands of people. This century stands out so by multiplying the mass crimes that have caused large movements of forced migration of entire populations were forced to take the path to deportation or exile. The first recorded by forced migration this century was the deportation of the Herero. At the beginning of the century in 1904, this nation was forced to leave their living space for reasons related to the German policy of domination of their country. It was in the list of deportations that would save the century later, the first to have undergone forced migration. This forced migration is known as people who carry neither the choice of departure nor the destination. The Herero people, like Jews and Cambodians, were not told they were leaving their homes by force or under what conditions he would live. In their book The Century of the camps, Joel Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot point, about the Herero that:
"Few people today know the existence of the Herero, their history, their destiny. Yet it this people, who lived within the boundaries of present-day Namibia, has matured the unenviable privilege of suffering the first genocide of the twentieth century [...] and to inaugurate the forced labor in concentration camps where the German colonial was deported and imprisoned. "
The Germans who a few years later as we shall see, had masterminded the deportation of Jews to death camps at Auschwitz were deemed essential in their policy of colonization of the African people to carry out its forced displacement. Thus, as noted by these authors,
"The purpose of the administration German by forcing these people to abandon their land was to transform the South West African colony of white settlement, to park in the native reserves and, if they prove recalcitrant and troublesome to get rid of it altogether . "
The objective of the Germans by forcing these people to forced migration at the cost of their lives had been occupying their land in a defined purpose in advance. This settlement policy was also practiced by other European colonizers in Africa and elsewhere where some colonies were considered as areas accommodate settlement before the Europeans. This was particularly the case of Algeria had been colonized by France since 1830. Jacques Ferrandez notes:
"The modern colonial era began for France, the capture of Algiers in July 1830. After the victory of the expeditionary force of Charles X, the question is: should we keep Algiers and the surrounding areas? And for what? The question was soon decided: Algeria became the first element of the second French colonial empire [...] It even became the only French settlement. "At the same
vein as the forced migration of Herero people in 1904 by the German colonial administration, it is noted that the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, in 1915 and 1916, during World War I, between 1.2 million and 1.5 million Armenians were killed on the spot or died during deportation. In 1914, after failed negotiations with the Russians, Turkey ranks in the camp of the Triple Alliance. The Armenians had announced as early as August of that year they fulfill their duty as Ottoman citizens. However, in November 1914, the jihad was proclaimed by the Sultan, and from the beginning the war the Armenians are presented as spies and traitors to the empire. And
"May 20, 1915, the Interior Minister Young Turk Mehmed Taalat promulgated an interim order of deportation [...] The law provided that the deportations should take place in" the best possible conditions "to the deserts of Syria where the Armenians were supposed to relocate away from the front lines [...] The scheme developed by this law was twofold: first, it diverted attention from the victims of the real intent, which was that of extermination, but it was mainly intended to lay the foundations of post-genocidal attitude of exoneration. "
As the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey was victim of discrimination and deportation in 1914 in full First World War, a few years later, during World War II (1939-1945), Jews of Europe, in their turn were forced by the German Nazis forced migration (deportation) to the concentration camps where they were, for several months, suffocated in gas chambers or died of starvation, thirst and cold. Indeed, in their conquest of Europe and their plan of reorganization of the ethnic composition of Eastern Europe, the Nazis used deportation by train to forcibly remove ethnic territory where they lived. These groups were thus forced to forced migration in exceptional circumstances. The intention of the Nazis being primarily to leave by all possible means the Jews of Europe. To achieve their purpose, they have not skimped on the methods to be used. They thus resorted to all the continent's rail networks to transport Jews to Poland. After beginning exterminate the Jews in specially constructed killing centers, the Nazis deported Jews by train, and during that trains were not available and the distances were short, by forced march or truck.
Like the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire of Turkey and the European Jews, the Cambodians were in the 1970s, victims of forced migration that had emptied the country's major cities of their populations to remote rural areas where they almost all would die in extreme conditions of hunger, thirst and fatigue of work. When the Khmer Rouge came to power Cambodia in 1975, they were determined to create a new company starting up destroying all aspects of the old. They are gradually starting a program to move to urban populations in agricultural cooperatives, to rehabilitate them by removing the very idea of private property, to develop a self-sustaining economy and medicine, to remove silver and family meals. In the following passage, Pine Yathay, Cambodian genocide survivor, recounts the circumstances under which he, his family and thousands of his compatriots were deported by Khmer Rouge:
'The Khmer Rouge entered the temple before dawn. They ordered us to leave the early morning sun. The voice of the officer was ominous. She did not tolerate dissent. The monks and refugees, bringing together the few belongings they could carry, set off. Even the monks were ordered to obey. The open city was emptied of its inhabitants. The deportation began. Some Khmer Rouge soldiers struggled in every direction, near the pagoda, to peddle the evacuation order. They urged people to leave. "So
Phnom Penh, the capital Cambodia, was completely emptied of its population. A whole nation was forced to migrate, leaving everything behind to die in remote rural areas of the country. In doing so, the Khmer Rouge believed revenge and urban population then considered corrupted by luxury and individuality.
In the same vein, we note the forced migration caused by armed conflicts in Africa for several decades. The African continent since the aftermath of independence faced with ethnic wars and / or civilian authorities who have driven thousands of people to take the road of exile to go find refuge elsewhere. The Biafran war in armed conflicts in Africa's Great Lakes via the rebellions in Liberia, Siera Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, the continent seems to beat the bailiffs in violence. In Liberia, rebels and government armed forced are engaged in an armed conflict that had forced much of the civilian population to flee the country to seek protection in neighboring countries. The neighboring country, Sierra Leone, had lived the same nightmare that had forced hundreds of people to forced migration to ensure their safety. Similarly Côte d'Ivoire has experienced a situation of civil war and insecurity that had led in early 2000, thousands of Ivorians to move from one region to another if it is sometimes in neighboring countries. And in Mauritania, in the late 1980s, thousands of citizens were driven from the country to Senegal following the events of 1989. Indeed, in 1989, an incident on the border between Senegal and Mauritania triggers a spiral of xenophobic riots in both countries. Conflict "classic" coexistence between nomadic and sedentary, and a crisis between the two states. Mauritania authorities have carried out extensive raids followed by mass expulsions, the government also decided to expel its own nationals Senegalese supposedly "originating from Senegal. Tens of thousands of people claiming Mauritanian nationality were thus suppressed beyond the common border, including Mali.
In the same vein, Africa Great Lakes (Burundi, Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, etc.). We have witnessed in recent years an upsurge of violence against defenseless civilian populations. This part of the African continent, from the beginning independence, a real powder keg where extremists on all sides, rebels and government forces engaged in a war without thank you forcing thousands of people to flee. This has culminated in the genocidal Rwandan disaster of 1994, three months had pushed in a first step, the Tutsis to flee their homes to escape death, and secondly, the Hutu who, before the impending victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, had chosen to flee to neighboring countries not to be surprised and massacred.
