Demographic replacement is nothing new. Ask the Carthaginians. How about American Indians? Could Australian Aboriginals and Rohingya Muslims weigh in as well? Prussians? Palestinians? There are myriad examples. This sordid business ever bedevils us.

Cyprus

Cyprus is swamped. With the EU’s highest per capita rate of asylum seekers, half of the school children in Europe’s only divided capital, Nicosia, are of migrant background.

Turkish forces invaded Cyprus in 1974, occupying 36 percent of the island, ostensibly to protect ethnic Turks. Over 170,000 Greek Cypriots were forced to leave occupied areas, an ethnic cleansing not seen in Europe since the aftermath of World War II. Today Cyprus has 1.2 million people. According to The European Conservative, the migrant crisis is “leading to the demographic replacement of the island’s native population.” Nobody voted for this.

The occupied northern part of Cyprus… has been a victim of Turkey’s policies aiming to erase its Greek and Christian identity since 1974. These policies include the influx of illegal settlers from Turkey, the illegal deployment of around 40,000 Turkish soldiers, the systematic annihilation of the Greek cultural and religious heritage, the unlawful seizures of lands and properties from their rightful owners, and the illegal alteration of the original Greek names of geographical locations (such as towns and villages) into Turkish, among others.

[T]he government of Cyprus said that this illegal immigrant crisis was creating “significant demographic change,” “ghettoisation in urban areas,” and “acute socio-economic effects.”

The native Greek population… is currently facing demographic replacement by Muslim migrants… The Republic of Cyprus needs concrete support from the West to preserve its indigenous demography and millennia-long Greek civilization.

According to the Interior Ministry’s Costas Constantinou, “Our country’s capacity to host migrants has long been surpassed. We are overflowing.” In 2021 the government announced that Cyprus was in a “state of emergency.” Migrant facilities were overwhelmed. Cyprus begs the EU for help. The tsunami continues.

Initially migrants were ferried by Turkey to Northern Cyprus, then shunted into the UN buffer zone. In 2022 the EU officially condemned Turkey for exploiting immigration for political purposes: “[T]he EU has recognised the instrumentalisation or ‘weaponisation’ of migration by Turkey through the Green Line.”

That led to a shift in tactics. In 2023 “irregular arrivals by sea” increased more than 300 percent and boat landings more than doubled.

In Cyprus there are more than 30 percent more asylum applications than births. The UN’s World Population Prospects says native Cypriot fertility (1.3 last year) has fallen every year since 1983.

Subcontinental strife

A recent Kashmir Media Service report levelled explosive allegations against India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Per Pakistan’s UrduPoint.com:

Modi Forcing Systematic Demographic Change In Muslim Majority IIOJK: Report [Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir].

In line with its settler colonial agenda, Modi regime is settling outsiders in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir to change the territory’s demography and annihilate the Kashmiris’ identity.

Ethnic and religious strife pervades the Hindu Kush, stemming from disputes arising during the bloody Partition of India (1947) following dissolution of the British Raj.

In 1990 a Muslim-led rebellion resulted in 250,000 Kashmir Pandit (Hindu) refugees. In 2019 India’s Hindu nationalist government abrogated the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, abolishing their authority to set residency requirements. Now Hindus are moving in, boosting the ideology of Hindutva, aka “Hindu supremacy.”

The Modi government’s policy was largely unnoticed in the West, but not elsewhere. Al Jazeera: “Kashmir Muslims fear demographic shift as thousands get residency” --

Up to 25,000 people granted domicile certificates raising fears of the beginning of demographic change in Kashmir.

Religious tensions run high in India. Muslim fertility rates exceed those of majority Hindus, but the gap is closing as India now has below-replacement fertility (2.0). Projections are that India’s Muslim population will not reach 20 percent by 2100. Nonetheless, many Hindus fear they are gradually being replaced by Muslims. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stokes these concerns. Every week sees violent Hindu-Muslim confrontations.

The Kashmir report fans the flames of a dangerous situation:

It said that Modi was forcing a systematic demographic change in the Muslim majority territory by allotting IIOJK’s land to Indian citizens and investors.

The report urged the international community to stop the Modi regime from altering the demographic composition of the Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir.

A Srinagar resident commented: “The decision to provide non-Kashmiri residents with a domicile certificate is certainly the beginning of the end. This is the beginning of Kashmir becoming another Palestine.”[Emphasis added]

Speaking of Palestine

Will the Gaza war expand?

Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza in response to the Hamas uprising has been called genocide. It does seem that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is on the agenda. The animus is mutual: Many Palestinians want the ethnic cleansing of Jews. This is all about demographic replacement. Reprehensible.

Tribes have been warring in the Levant (and everywhere else) for millennia. Ethnic cleansing and forced resettlement are replacement theory in practice. Merely discussing these issues can arouse emotions that bring out the worst in us.