Talk:Dalmatian Serb pogrom of May 1991

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Intercepted this on NP patrol, and the last sentence and external link indicate that the author may have Serb bias. I do not know much about the nitty-gritty of the Balkan wars to comment.Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 02:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • It's interesting. "Zadar Kristallnacht" draws a blank on Google. However, Slobodan Milosevic uses an phrase translated as "Crystal night in Zadar" several times during both his testimony and his questioning of witnesses. I think the article needs to go, but possibly it just needs to be moved. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
what exactly are you disputing? you have to say what is disputed, not just to add a notice like that. —This unsigned comment was added by Pirkovank (talk • contribs) .

Contents

[edit] Articles for Deletion debate

This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splashtalk 17:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

In view of this, I have to propose the following - heavy NPOV-ing is needed. More sources are needed (two of those cited in external links section are biased to say the least, one being Milosevic's testimony in Hague, the other from a known apologist of Milosevic regime Carl Savich). Title should be changed to something like "Dalmatian Serb pogrom of 1991", pogrom being much more neutral and not relating to a specific incident, but Dalmatian Crystal Night should remain as a redirect. I won't change anything without at least some kind of consensus, but I will certainly not allow this version to stay. Please comment. --Dr.Gonzo 21:22, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Yea, change it to Dalmatian Serb pogrom of 1991. Also, at the begining of the article it should be mentioned that the incident is sometimes refered to as Dalmatian Kristallnacht or Dalmatian Crystal Night. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 22:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, now let's move on to bigger issues. Serbian bias needs to go. All of it. In view of the controversy of this article reliable sources are needed, and by reliable I don't mean Serbianna, or Feral, or any local newspaper. I mean reputable news agencies, books from reputable authors, verifiable police statistics, anything. Infact, I see very little that can be salvaged from the existing article. Please, let's just stick to the cold, hard facts, and let's leave the personal (and suspiciously superficial) opinions of book authors aside. I'm asking rational Serbian wikipedians like Bormalagurski to do this themselves, since you probably wouldn't like what I'd do with it. So, once that is done, maybe we can come to a consensus on the rest. Thank you. --Dr.Gonzo 22:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree, the article is too biased, a lot of stuff must go. I've added some text to the media section (quotes from the New York Times, Croatian Nedeljni Tjednik (the newspaper that published the names of the people that were killed),...). I will now try to make the article more NPOV, so please comment when I'm done, together, we can make this article completely neutral. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 22:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I welcome your willingness to compromise. Please add links for every verifiable source or I'll be forced to remove those paragraphs. I look forward to cleaning this article up. Later. --Dr.Gonzo 22:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I've cleaned the article up a bit, but I didn't write the article myself, so I don't know where some people got the information. Before we delete it, we should ask the people who wrote the text to post a link, and if it's unverifiable, then we delete it. I did add a few links, but the article needs more. What do you think of my more "neutralized" article? --Boris Malagurski ₪ 23:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I think your edits are a step in the right direction, however, a lot of unverified nonsense remains. I think we shouldn't wait for those sources, but delete everything that is not verifiable. If those users have interest in making this article NPOV they will provide sources and restore the deleted paragraphs (that's what "history" tab is for). I think it's a far better solution than leaving the article as it is for who knows how long. --Dr.Gonzo 23:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Which parts do you want to delete? --Boris Malagurski ₪ 23:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, the whole "Background" part has nothing to do with background. It is conveniently left out that May 2nd 1991 is the date of the Borovo Selo massacre and that the public outrage over the deaths of the policemen was the main cause for the violence against Serbs and Serb property. Also, the Human Watch link you provided is a good, reputable source, and it doesn't go into any specifics, but does point out that all crimes against Serbs were investigated by the police and over a hundered cases made it to court. It also states that the official policy of the government was to help those Serbs that decided to stay, and that the violence was perpetrated mainly by "gangs or individual extremists". The claim in this article of "tens of thousands" of houses destroyed is directly refuted, since it quotes that in 1992 7,489 houses were damaged or destroyed, but only 220 in the first 3 months of 1993. That indicates that the violence was calming down. In the last section, "Reporting of the events in the media", last two paragraphs need to go, especially due to the dubious "Night of the Long knives" reference. That's it for now, will comment more later. --Dr.Gonzo 23:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I've added information about the Borovo Selo massacre, you were right, it's very important to mention that in the background section. I've deleted the very last paragraph of the media section, and modified the second last one. Also, some text from the Human rights watch link should be added. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 00:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Your addition to the Background section is a little clumsily written, but it can stay for now, it's certainly much better than not mentioning it at all. I think we shouldn't be adding any more text until we clean up and agree on what should stay of the existing article. That brings us to another problem, one I pointed out in the AFD talk. Should this article be merged into a bigger one dealing with human rights violations against Serbs in Croatia during the war? If it's to stay as it is, a lot of unneccesary info not relating to Dalmatia should be removed, for example, Gospic is not in Dalmatia. --Dr.Gonzo 00:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the idea of a bigger article as you suggest would be a good one. On the Gospic incident, I see there's already a fair bit of info on this in Mirko Norac. -- ChrisO 00:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea, Dr. Gonzo, let's do it, lets make an article about human rights violations against Serbs in Croatia, and put the stuff, that doesn't fit in here, into the new article. Once again, excellent idea. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 01:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll agree to that, under one condition - that you commit yourself to making this new "HR violations" article a part of a series of articles concerning HR violations across Former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. I'll commit to it too, naturally, but I can't do it alone. I think that your involvement in such series of articles would raise it's credibility considerably. Concerning this article - if we do this then it needs to be stripped to basics, as everything else can be explained elsewhere. By the way, "HR violations against Serbs in Croatia" is a very clumsy title for an article, any suggestions on improving it? --Dr.Gonzo 01:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I said "lets do it", and I meant "lets do it together". Of course, I will commit, I think that the article will look better if we do it together, and probably more neutral, since I'm a Serbian Wikipedian, and you're a Croatian Wikipedian. Concerning the title, it's pretty hard to find a shorter title without offending someone. My proposals are "Croatian crimes against Serbs", "Crimes against Serbs in Croatia", "Croatian violations against Serbs", "Violations against Serbs in Croatia", OR those could just be redirects, and the original article "Human rights violations against Serbs in Croatia in the 1990s"... I don't know... I'm not very creative :-) --Boris Malagurski ₪ 02:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
How about we just leave Serbs out of the title and make the article more general in nature? It will be mostly concerned with Serbs anyway, but this way we can add problems with Bosniaks also. Something like "Croatia human rights record 1990-1999"? We can then branch out from there with more specific articles when needed. --Dr.Gonzo 02:26, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Sure, sounds good. The title could be Human rights violations in Croatia in the 1990s, and we'll make a bunch of redirects to that page. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 02:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I noticed in the Human rights in Europe article that there is already a red link for Human rights in Croatia, so maybe we should start from there, to cover as much ground as possible. We can certainly branch out to HR in 1990s, and we would actually be doing a good thing for other articles that have that red link already. I'm certain that once we open that article more wikipedians will start to contribute. Anyways, if you want you can start with that right away, I'll retire for the night. We can continue this discussion on Human rights in Croatia talk page tommorow. --Dr.Gonzo 02:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I've wrote a few lines of text, and added a few links. Lets continue this discussion here. --Boris Malagurski ₪ 03:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some thoughts on how to proceed

I agree entirely with the move of the article to this title (I've sharpened it up a bit further). Wikipedia has a long-standing convention of using neutral titles for contentious incidents (see Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, not "Tiananmen Square Massacre"; likewise September 11, 2001 attacks, not "September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks"). Given that "Dalmatian Kristallnacht" is such a POV term, the move is a good idea.

Regarding the contents of this article, I think it conflated two separate things. First, the actual "Dalmatian Serb pogrom of 1991" was the incidents in Zadar and Sibenik (apparently not Trogir?). The killings in Gospić were an entirely separate incident that happened months later, and Gospić isn't in Dalmatia anyway. Second, the material about the anti-Serb manifestations in Croatia seems to me much more relevant to an article on human rights in Croatia in the 1990s in general.

In view of this, I've revised the article so that it focuses squarely on the events of 2 May 1991. I've made it much less POV (hopefully) and added more references. I'll move a revised version of the Gospić content into a new article, Gospić massacre. I suggest that the generic material on anti-Serb views be moved to a general article on human rights, which can link out to specific incidents such as 2 May and Gospić. -- ChrisO 11:16, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

you removed links, context etc. after long debate this is not justified - boris and gonzo have worked hard to npov this. Pirkovank 17:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Please don't revert again before discussing here Pirkovank! You're right, Bormalagurski and I have worked hard to come to a consensus, but the version of the article where we stopped last night is by no means NPOV. I see ChrisO's edits as positive, especially since he can bring a level of neutrality we cannot (being an outside observer). In any case, there's no need to blow up this article out of proportion with dubious excerpts from outside sources. You are welcome to contribute on the new Human rights in Croatia article and articles that branch out from that one, but let's do this the Wikipedia way. And remember, if Wikipedia isn't neutral it's nothing, and everybody loses. --Dr.Gonzo 19:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The article about Zadar pogrom is full of serbian pro fascist propaganda and therefore it should be widley considered unrealible and with desputed neutrality!!!

Can you say what specifically you dispute? -- ChrisO 09:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gospić massacre

I've now created a new Gospić massacre article. Unfortunately, because of the lack of any sourcing for the material in the old version of the Dalmatian Serb pogrom article, I've had to dump all the Gospić-related material from that and start from the beginning using only verifiable sources. See what you think of it... -- ChrisO 01:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this article could be a bit more NPOV-ised... --HolyRomanEmperor 17:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

It think it has pro fascist elements because it states that the croatian authoroties did nothing to stop the violence, and this simply is not true. The police acted instantly. Also the number of serbian owned buissnese damaged is enlarged, it was probably less then 50 maybe evan less than that. It was a response to serbian nationalist agression backed by Belgrade. Few days earlier the dalmatian Serb minority sang Serbian nationalist and anti-croat songs in the center of [Zadar]. One of the "songs" was Slobodane donesi salate bit će mesa klat ćemo Hrvate! (Slobodan bring us the salad there will be meat we will butcher the Croats!; the same thing they later sung when they occupied [Vukovar].

Emoutofthevee

[edit] Neutrality

Kristallnacht sounds like a Nazi pogrom. That is absolutely inacceptable. Prkno 20:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly POV, but it's clearly a name that some have given to this event (see the discussion above). However, it's not what the article itself is called. We simply note alternative names - even if they are POV - in the text while keeping the article title neutral. See for instance Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which notes the name "Tiananmen Square Massacre" in the text, even though that name is disparaged by supporters of the Chinese Communist Party. -- ChrisO 21:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] biased article, needs to go

These incidents need to be moved into the description of events that took place during the war. Referring to these events as a "pogrom" is not only inaccurate but insultingly so. This article is blatantly biased and should be removed.

- r.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.70.183.154 (talk • contribs).

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