How to Use ethnic cleansing in a Sentence

ethnic cleansing

noun
  • Critics warn the scheme could amount to ethnic cleansing.
    — Alexis Simendinger, The Hill, 14 Aug. 2025
  • And now in the north of the Gaza Strip, there is an ethnic cleansing.
    — Leah Asmelash, CNN, 3 Nov. 2024
  • To be blunt, the work of ICE is the work of ethnic cleansing.
    — Sarah Jeong, The Verge, 1 Mar. 2026
  • In Yei, ethnic cleansing turned the once-peaceful town into a kind of hell.
    — Justin Lynch, Slate Magazine, 9 June 2017
  • What the Turks are doing now is ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2019
  • What makes Spain unique is that here the aims of ethnic cleansing were fully realized.
    — Aatish Taseer Richard Mosse, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2022
  • The conflict forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in bouts of ethnic cleansing on both sides.
    — Daniel Sneider, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Oct. 2020
  • Khanna didn’t use the words genocide or ethnic cleansing as the other speakers did.
    — Noah Bierman, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2024
  • All Arab states have rejected the plan, and Hamas has called it ethnic cleansing.
    — Aya Batrawy, NPR, 15 May 2025
  • In fact, Shatz thinks this word—which does have a whiff of ethnic cleansing—is a mistranslation.
    — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 28 Mar. 2024
  • There is no place for genocide, for ethnic cleansing, for war crimes in the 21st century.
    — CBS News, 10 Nov. 2019
  • The process often involved brute force or ethnic cleansing as land was seized and handed over to immigrants.
    — John Rennie Short, The Conversation, 14 Mar. 2022
  • On the contrary, an eager appetite for ethnic cleansing could not have been more apparent.
    — Diane Cole, WSJ, 19 Jan. 2022
  • Rights groups say ‘ethnic cleansing’ is happening in Ethiopia’s Tigray.
    — Laura Blasey, Los Angeles Times, 7 Apr. 2022
  • The White House has built a massive secret police force tasked with ethnic cleansing.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Researchers have found that Facebook has been used to spread everything from hate speech to ethnic cleansing.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 25 Oct. 2021
  • The United Nations chief has warned that ethnic cleansing could be taking place.
    — Shashank Bengali, latimes.com, 8 Sep. 2017
  • And what has really changed is that ethnic cleansing has become a part of the mainstream public discourse.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2025
  • The Kurds are worried that Turkey is intent on ethnic cleansing.
    — Ephrat Livni, Quartz, 12 Oct. 2019
  • Israeli demands for the mass evacuation of parts of Gaza have raised the specter of ethnic cleansing.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 23 Oct. 2023
  • This means ethnic cleansing by removing the Kurds from their land and replacing them with some others.
    — Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2019
  • Others are children of families who were displaced by ethnic cleansing.
    — Arminka Helic, Time, 30 June 2026
  • The students seem to be split on how best to stand against Spencer's message of white nationalism and ethnic cleansing.
    — Elena Hilton, Esquire, 19 Oct. 2017
  • But in Myanmar, and even in Rakhine itself, there is stark denial that any ethnic cleansing is taking place.
    — Hannah Beech, New York Times, 24 Oct. 2017
  • This is a war that a former defense minister to Netanyahu has referred to as ethnic cleansing.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 26 Aug. 2025
  • The largest change that has happened in the past two years is that the possibility of large-scale ethnic cleansing has become very real.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2025
  • But there’s a sense that there is a deliberate ethnic cleansing of the Shia populations in the south.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Expelling the population would amount to ethnic cleansing.
    — Bloomberg Opinion, Twin Cities, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Even he might have been shocked, though, to see an Israeli government bent on ethnic cleansing through bombing and starvation.
    — Ian Buruma, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025
  • As reports of ethnic cleansing emerged, the world reacted with disbelief as Suu Kyi stayed silent.
    — Catesby Holmes, The Conversation, 11 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ethnic cleansing.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: