Forced assimilation in the context of Genocide

Yugoslavia was a state concept among the South Slavic intelligentsia and later popular masses from the 19th to early 20th centuries that culminated in its realization after the 1918 collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However, from as early as 1922 onward, the kingdom was better known colloquially as Yugoslavia (or similar variants); in 1929 the name was made official when the country was formally renamed the "Kingdom of Yugoslavia".

The creation of Yugoslavia has been described as expansionist and irredentist in its approach to foreign policy, and federalist in its approach to politics, with power centralised in the Serb-dominated government. Despite the idea of Yugoslavism having promoted equality among the South Slavic ethnic groups, the new Yugoslav state was ruled by the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty that sought to implement pro-Serb policies throughout the country, leaving minority groups like Croatians and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) not feeling represented in the new government. This led to the formation of opposition parties that became identified with particular ethnic groups within the country. Similarly, the concept of Yugoslavism became associated with the idea of a South Slavic nation dominated by Serbs; and in some instances, forced cultural assimilation policies introduced by the Serb-led Yugoslav government. However, the creation of Yugoslavia remained popular even among non-Serbs, as it was seen as a means of unification for South Slavs to protect themselves against non-Slavic powers such as Fascist Italy.

Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or fully adopts the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group. The melting pot model is based on this concept. A related term is "cultural integration", which describes the process of becoming economically and socially integrated into another society while retaining elements of one's original culture. Cultural assimilation is the opposite of multiculturalism (or a "cultural mosaic"), as assimilation involves a minority group adopting the dominant culture, while multiculturalism promotes the coexistence and preservation of multiple cultures. Another closely related concept is acculturation, which occurs through cultural diffusion and involves changes in the cultural patterns of one or both groups, while still maintaining distinct characteristics.

There are various types of cultural assimilation, including full assimilation and forced assimilation. Full assimilation is common, as it occurs spontaneously. Assimilation can also involve what is called additive assimilation, in which individuals or groups expand their existing cultural repertoire rather than replacing their ancestral culture. This is an aspect it shares with acculturation as well. When used as a political ideology, assimilationism refers to governmental policies of deliberately assimilating ethnic groups into a national culture. It encompasses both voluntary and involuntary assimilation.

Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term genocide. The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide. The precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, and the United Nations does not include it in the definition of genocide used in the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Armenian genocide Museum defines culturicide as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction", which appears to be essentially the same as ethnocide. Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term ethnocide as a substitute for cultural genocide, although this usage has been criticized as risking the confusion between ethnicity and culture. Cultural genocide and ethnocide have in the past been used in distinct contexts. Cultural genocide without ethnocide is conceivable when a distinct ethnic identity is kept, but distinct cultural elements are eliminated.

Culturicide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures. The issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define war crimes associated with the destruction of culture. Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate. Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention initially considered using the term, but later dropped it from inclusion. The term "cultural genocide" has been considered in various draft United Nations declarations, but it is not used by the UN Genocide Convention.

Māori (Māori: [ˈmaːɔɾi] ) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed a distinct culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.

Early contact between Māori and Europeans, starting in the 18th century, ranged from beneficial trade to lethal violence; Māori actively adopted many technologies from the newcomers. With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the two cultures coexisted for a generation. Rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s, and subsequent land confiscations, which Māori resisted fiercely. After the Treaty was declared a legal nullity in 1877, Māori were forced to assimilate into many aspects of Western culture. Social upheaval and epidemics of introduced disease took a devastating toll on the Māori population, which fell dramatically, but began to recover by the beginning of the 20th century. The March 2023 New Zealand census gives the number of people of Māori descent as 978,246 (19.6% of the total population), an increase of 12.5% since 2018. Of those identifying as Māori at the 2023 census, 366,015 people (41.2%) identified as of sole Māori ethnicity while 409,401 people (46.1%) identified as of both European and Māori ethnicity.

Thai people, historically known as Siamese people, are an ethnic group native to Thailand. In a narrower and ethnic sense, the Thais are also a Tai ethnic group dominant in Central and Southern Thailand (Siam proper). Part of the larger Tai ethno-linguistic group native to Southeast Asia as well as Southern China, Thais speak the Sukhothai languages (Central Thai and Southern Thai language), which is classified as part of the Kra–Dai family of languages. The majority of Thais are followers of Theravada Buddhism.

Government policies during the late 1930s and early 1940s resulted in the successful forced assimilation of various ethno-linguistic groups into the country's dominant Central Thai language and culture, leading to the term Thai people to come to refer to the population of Thailand overall. This includes other subgroups of the Tai ethno-linguistic group, such as the Northern Thais and the Isan people, as well as non-Southeast Asian and non-Tai groups, the largest of which is that of the Han Chinese, who form a substantial minority ethnic group in Thailand.

The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate plot (often blamed on Jews) to cause the extinction of white people through forced assimilation, mass immigration, or violent genocide. It purports that this goal is advanced through the promotion of miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non-white immigration, racial integration, low fertility rates, abortion, pornography, LGBTQ identities, governmental land-confiscation from whites, organised violence, and eliminationism in majority white countries. Under some theories, Black people, non-white Hispanics, East Asians, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Arabs are blamed for the secret plot, but usually as more fertile immigrants, invaders, or violent aggressors, rather than as the masterminds. A related, but distinct, conspiracy theory is the Great Replacement theory.

White genocide is a political myth based on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and ethnic hatred, and is driven by a psychological panic often termed "white extinction anxiety". Objectively, white people are not dying out or facing extermination. The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to justify a commitment to a white nationalist agenda in support of calls to violence.

During World War II, around 200,000 ethnic Polish children as well as an unknown number of children of other Slavic ethnicities from the Soviet Union were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Nazi Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experimentation, or Germanization. This was among the most notable Nazi crimes against children.

An aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children believed to have Aryan/Nordic traits because Nazi officials believed that they were the descendants of German settlers who had emigrated to Poland or the Soviet Union. Those labelled "racially valuable" (gutrassig) were forcibly assimilated in centres and then forcibly adopted to German families and SS Home Schools.

American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a main primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated American Indian culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid Church denominations to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools. Similarly to schools that taught speakers of immigrant languages, the curriculum was rooted in linguistic imperialism, the English-only movement, and forced assimilation enforced by corporal punishment. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools.

Children were typically immersed in the Anglo-American culture of the upper class. Schools forced removal of indigenous cultural signifiers: cutting the children's hair, having them wear American-style uniforms, forbidding them from speaking their mother tongues, and replacing their tribal names with English language names (saints' names under some religious orders) for use at the schools, as part of assimilation and to Christianize them. The schools were usually harsh, especially for younger children who had been forcibly separated from their families and forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures. Children sometimes died in the school system due to infectious disease. Investigations of the later 20th century revealed cases of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

Throughout the history of Canada, the Canadian government, its colonial predecessors, and European settlers perpetrated systematic violence against Indigenous peoples that in contemporary times, increasingly has been described as genocide. These collective actions included instances of forced displacement, land dispossession, policies alleged to have intentionally caused starvation, physical violence, and compulsory assimilation programs. These atrocities have also been described as ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Canada is a settler-colonial nation whose initial economy relied on farming and exporting natural resources like fur, fish, and lumber. The Canadian government implemented policies such as the Indian Act, health-care segregation, residential schools and displacement that attempted assimilation of Indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian culture while asserting control over the land and its resources. Despite current views that might define these actions as racist or genocidal, they were seen as progressive at the time. In response, a number of Indigenous communities mobilized to resist such policies.