The
silent ethnic cleansing is a term coined in the mid-1990s by political partisans of the
Serbian side of the
Yugoslavian civil war. Apparently concerned with Western-media representations of atrocities committed in the conflict -- which generally focused on those perpetrated by the Serbian-dominated central government and Serbian nationalists -- these groups dubbed any reciprocal atrocities "silent", on the grounds that they believed they were not receiving adequate coverage.
Since that time, the term has been used by other ethnically oriented groups for situations that they perceive to be similar -- examples include both sides in Northern Ireland's continuing troubles, and those who object to the expulsion of Germans from Soviet-occupied Germany in the years ending and immediately following World War II.