Ethnic cleansing are all forms of attempts of elimination of a particular ethnic group. Ethnic cleansing may take place in subtle forms as well as radical forms. Ethnic cleansing may take place mentally or physically.

Ethnic cleansing usually takes place to homogenize the population of a given particular territory or make the dominant ethnic group(s) culture omnipresent.
Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied by efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, through the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
1. Enforced - Ethnic cleansing could be enforced. Such as the state power could use institutionalized force to conduct ethnic cleansing. The dominant group with the aim of ethnic cleansing may form their own army to create an enforcing state.
For example: the government declares use of X language illegal, use of X language invalid for administrative purposes.

2. Systematic - The systematic forms of ethnic cleansing takes a well planned or a step-wise process to achieve the wider goal of ethnic cleansing.
Such for example may be the ethnic group X speaks the language X predominantly used in the place X. With access to power and influence, group Y influences the trends where use of language X moves into the path of being invalid while the validity of language Y increases.
Consequently the X population starts adopting the Y language while language X goes into the process of not being passed down to a newer generation, being excluded out of important sectors, pushing further into limitations in use, language shift & finally the death of language X.
3. Indoctrinated - These forms of ethnic cleansing target people's mindset and ideology. Examples could be that the X population is made to feel inferior to their own culture & language, that any symbolism that seems to be a part of the culture gets stigmatized, bullied & +
+ outcasted, that being related to the ethnic group is considered a matter of shame or subject of humiliation - further leading to people of the ethnic group to feel inferiority complex about their own ethnicity, that consequently may cause them to deliberately disassociate +
with their ethnicity & express themselves in relation to what might be deemed as a part of the ethnicity. This also usually comes with glorification or validation for being part of the dominant ethnicity or having features that associate with the dominant ethnicity.
These forms of ethnic cleansing may associate certain ethnic group(s) to shame, taboo, uncivilized or other stigmas while associate certain ethnic group(s) to pride, nationalism, civilized or other forms of glorification.
Attempts of ethnic cleansing may encompass all these three forms enforced, systematic and indoctrinated in varying degrees or ways.

Some instances of ethnic cleansing based on action could be:

1. Setlanocide: Removal or Destroying the settlement of a particular ethnic group.
Setlanocide could also be particularly conducted in the name of development projects.

2. Banishment: This refers to a particular population being banished or forced to leave their traditional territory without any need of evacuating the place for emergency.
3. Linguicide: This includes actions that lead for a language to die or become extinct. Such could take form of banning the language, making it invalid in administration, keeping it out from school and education, associating stigma over the language & accent, +
changing names of places in a given language (toponymicide), names of rivers (hydronymicide), causing a language shift and all forms of systematically replacing a language in a given territory.
4. Memoricide: Eradication of memory from the people. It usually means that people's memory and knowledge about their own culture, history and language becomes eradicated.
It means breaking the bridge so that passing on all forms of memory and knowledge about one's ethnicity does not get through the newer generation and is ultimately lost.
5. Genocide: Genocide is the most radical form of ethnic cleansing. It is recognized as an international crime. The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, +
ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", +
preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.

Ethnic cleansing can take place through law, government and the state, groups themselves, through education system, through health care system, through the market system, through media, etc.
[Today N.S. 1141/02/16]

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Every single public defender. Every single day.


Bail arguments, motions, oral arguments, hearings. Judges don’t know, follow, or care about the law. Prosecutors are willing to take advantage of it. And mandatory minimums, withheld evidence, & pretrial detention coerces people to plead before trial. When theres a jury. A shot.

But defenders still fight. And still win. Most times wins aren’t “Justice.” It’s power of repetition of argument in front of same judges. Introducing those in power to the people they oppress. Not just a RAP sheet or words on a page. Defenders make it harder to be brutal & cruel.

I worked as a public defender at an office as well resourced as any in the country. Social workers, team of investigators, a reentry team, support staff, specialist attorneys in immigration, housing, education, family. Relatively low caseloads (80-100). And yet still injustice.

Most think that balancing the scales of justice means more funding for defenders. Thats part of it. Enough a attorneys to actually be at bail hearings. Wrap around services to be able to help people trapped in the system end up better off in their communities. Lower caseloads.
I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.

How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.


Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.

I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.

And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.

(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)

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