Talk:Paris massacre of 1961

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This apears to be an excellent, well referenced article - sorry if some do not like it. Can we remove the cleanup tag? Christos

This seems to me to be a load of bollux. Are there any reputable news sources that acknowledge this? 128.252.251.43

We could do with some more research on this page, I think. It at least verges on POV. Rich Farmbrough 22:44, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Given the high number of victims - the decades-long silence on the massacre is a testament to the fragile state of civil rights and justice when people and governments feel threatened by events beyond their control.

Commentary.

The paucity of objective press coverage at the time of the massacre was likely due to two factors: successful censorship of the media by several levels of the French government, and biased reporting by major media outlets in countries that were supportive of the French government's policy regarding Algeria. Some censorship was enforced by the Paris government due to concerns about responsibilities within the Paris police department for the massacre, while other censorship was enforced by the

What kind of censorship? Give details. Wasn't it rather self-censorship by the newspapers?

These particular quotes appear to have been removed from this article already, so they no longer apply.

The article makes various very strong claims, all unsourced. David.Monniaux 03:08, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a TV Program called "Drawning with bullets" or something like that (الغرق رميا بالرصاص) I just watched few days ago on the NTV network in Lebanon, the country who loves and supports france, so I was surprised they showed it but anyhow .. the program showed many many many interviews with all types of people, journalists, ex police, investigators, witnesses and even the police chief at the time I think, they were all describing what they saw, did and witnessed, amazing stuff I saw and heard. After all these witnesses, you no longer have a doubt that this actualy happened, specialy when ex police talk about what they saw with their own eyes. Mistakes happen; we only can go on when we face the truth, and as they say, the truth will set you free 195.39.161.172 14:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC) Talal Malki - Kuwait Dec 16, 2005.

The french version of this article has quite a bit more detail, including sources; unless someone objects, I will probably do a translation of that page and use that as the basis for this article. @alex 18:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have restored the anonymously deleted passages, and removed the "totally disputed" tag, as for the first there has been no explanation at all, and for the second no comprehensive justification has been given within 4 months. Greetings 790 15:50, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Intro paragraph 2 this is not an unsourced event! 3 References example section 4 Moved subsection

[edit] Intro paragraph

This article needs an intro paragraph appearing before the TOC summarizing its contents briefly. You make this by writing a paragaph at the top without a double-equals-sign header. Someone more familiar with the matter discussed by this article than I am ought to write it. --arkuat (talk) 04:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I gave it a shot. Probably the language needs some cleanup, as usual x-) -790 12:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, 790. --arkuat (talk) 08:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] this is not an unsourced event!

Again, I removed the introduction of claims that this was an alleged incident only, this time by user:Aquarelle. As the article clearly states, French courts as well as the city authority of Paris have confirmed the incident. The external link to the BBC - that has been a part of the article for weeks - shows a photo of the plaque which the major of Paris unveiled in 2001, comemorating "des nombreux Algeriens tues", the numerous Algerians killed in the incident. Please read the given material before making such claims. -- 790 12:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Then cite the sources. Otherwise I'm going to have to remove several parts. I've replaced the tag - it is a call for help from other users to improve this article. As it stands, strong statements are made that need to be scrutinized back down to an NPOV level (unless, of course, they are well-documented, but nevertheless NPOV).

"The Paris massacre of 1961 appears to have been intentional. Official documentation and eyewitnesses within the Paris police department suggest that the massacre was directed by its police chief, Maurice Papon, who was an official of French Vichy government during World War II. Police records show that Papon called for officers in one station to be 'subversive' in quelling the demonstrations, and assured them protection from prosecution if they participated."

This part, for example, needs to have a reference. You can't go off saying that police were brutal, it was all planned-out, and that 200 people were killed just because Paris recognizes that something happened. Somebody must have had some sources when they wrote this, otherwise they were doing personal research (which we all know is a no-no at wikipedia). - Aquarelle 13:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

First of all, this is not the paragraph you changed, and that I was talking about. You wrote that the whole event may not actually have taken place. What kind of NPOV is that supposed to be? Now you fall back to another dispute that has been going on for a while, and that could indeed need sourcing, as I agree that the intentionality could be hard to proove, since Papon probably did not write out an order saying "lynch a score of Algerians", signed and stamped it. -- 790 14:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

What I'm adressing is the overall article, and I stand by my first correction : There is only a semi-reference from a foreign source (BBC does not represent the city of Paris), which is not even listed as a reference but as an "external link." As such, this incident may still be described as "alleged" since it was denied for 35 years until very recently. You are so eager to protect this article in its present state, but I see a dearth of willingness for improvement. I will continue to review this article in order to do away with the POV and the unreferenced claims - Aquarelle 17:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I wonder what makes you claim that I would reject improvements. To the contrary, I welcome them. I just don't think claiming that this incident may not have taken place at all is an improvement. I have added two french books as references, I don't know whether there are english editions. --790 21:47, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Do not bend my words like that ; I can see that you have a strong enough grasp of the English language to know that this is not what I'm saying. As far as we know from reading the article, the incident may never have happened. Citing sources should be a high priority for controversial articles such as this one so that they are more credible. This is the point which I wish to bring to this article as well as others of the same condition. I'm not sure what you are implying about the possible lack of english sources. As you may have noticed when you left me that message on my talk page, I certainly do speak French. I have no problem with non-english language sources, in fact, I encourage them. I don't think this should stop you at all from referencing them. - Aquarelle 21:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Aquarelle - you put the word "alleged" into the opening paragraph of this article. That act suggested that you thought that that there is no real proof that the event ever happened, and that Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, was perhaps foolish to unveil the plaque in 2001. If you were not suggesting this, then I am at a loss to understand why you did this? Clearly, as someone who speaks French you are in a far better position than I to go out and find references. It would have been far more constructive to find those references than to put the word "alleged" into an article's first paragraph. Jooler 05:54, 28 March 2006 (UTC) p.s. - here's another picture of the plaque - http://www.ldh-toulon.net/article.php3?id_article=124 Jooler 05:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

@Aquarelle: I think that the given sources are pretty trustworthy, and they imply that the incident took place without the slightest doubt, and the only fact in question is its extent. But if there are any sources claiming that nothing like this happened in 1961, it would be interesting to know them. -- 790 09:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

*Rolls eyes* Ok, you are both missing my point. Obviously, I am not an expert on this topic, but then again most French people aren't. I didn't say it didn't happen. I was trying to make a point that the sources are extremely important to the credibility. However, I would doubt that any credible source would completely refute that it ever happened. And, the sources that 790 took from French Wikipedia do appear credible (although I have not read them, and I don't even know if anyone involved in this article has).

It's exactly as 790 said - we just need to see to what extent. Perhaps the article should better portray that for the French government these people may have been regarded as terrorists. Just a little context. Since the current American President's recent crusade, anything in the name of counter terrorism is seen as some sort of godly act. I know, I know, it wasn't the same circumstances - it was a different time and a different place - I'm just trying to show that there are two different perspectives to the story, and that a good article should point that out. Do we agree ? - Aquarelle 11:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the comment that "if there are any sources claiming that nothing like this happenned", no, they aren't. The only discussion is about the extent of the massacre, since even today historians do not have full access to the archives and if you read one of the interview I've put as a reference, you will see that after the massacre some documents were destroyed. The matter was brought on, if I have good memory, during the trial of Maurice Papon, and, as usual in this kind of stuff, the question is whether an order was written or not (see the Holocaust' debates between intentionalism and functionalism if you have any doubt about the difficulty of proving written orders concerning massacres). Today, even the French state has recognized the massacre, although it recognized only a lower 40 dead, while by its own, one of the Parisian' Archives list 70 deads. Einaudi's authoritative work on the matter showed that it may go till 200 dead. Furthermore, concerning Aquarelle's comment above, the context is in the Algerian War of Independence. What more do you want to add? Last, to the guy who started this article and the others who translated parts, congratulations! However, I do hope that you understand the need of this ^[1] stuff in each sentence that may be controversial to people totally alien to the context. Frenchmen aren't surprised when they read this article, because most of them know about the stuff (although some comments here seem to show that it is not quite the case...), but English Wikipedia is international (WP:RS and WP:CS are good guidelines, and the articles about Anglo-Saxon events suffer from the same kind of problems (lack of explication of the context and lack of sources). So I do hope that people who put irrelevant "citation tag" in places where there's obviously no need for them do keep in mind the difficulty of it: while it is a good idea to put "citation tag" in some places (it forces to find a source), deleting content as it seems some people have done is not a good idea when you're totally foreign to the matter & so can't judge its relevancy. I hope that did'nt sound too bad, suspicion is a good thing in Wikipedia, this is how it improves and it how it forced me to spend two hours looking for sources... Tazmaniacs 00:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References example section

1. ^ the October 17, 1961 massacre happened !!!

This appears an excellent, well researched article. Can we please remove the clean up tag? The references are all there - it meets all the quality standards of Wikipedia - Christos

[edit] Moved subsection

I moved this here. Putting things into context is important, but it should not be done in a section in the end, named "wider implications", stuck between two other very precise sections. To the contrary, introduction to the context should be put... in the introduction. Furthermore, it has to be rewritten, sourced and all. The authors of the article had assumed, maybe erroneously, that a link to the Algerian War entry was enough to put into context. Currently, this passage looks like a lame attempt to justify this massacre. Strangely, instead of referring to the FLN attacks against the police (for the good reason that I had already documented this, with sources), it goes on talking about the café wars, an article which needs improvement. I don't see how the café wars explain why French police threw up to 200 Algerians in the Seine. Here is the disputed passage, for discussion:

"Wider implications" [name of subsection] Given the high number of victims, the decades-long silence on the massacre may be a reflection of the fragile state of civil rights and justice when people and governments feel threatened by events beyond their control. On the other hand, it may be a reflection of the fact that the killings took place in the middle of a large scale and brutal war in which at least 380,000 died, and there is an endless number of atrocities, on both sides, that could be discussed. 5,000 died in the "café wars" in France between the Algerian FLN and rival Algerian groups. European descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents. More than two million Algerians were displaced. Thousands of Algerians were tortured and killed in French Army or Police custody. Many captured French soldiers were tortured to death by the Algerian independence fighters. The Paris Massacre, and reporting of it, took place in this context, in which there was a constant stream of violent events to be reported. Human rights issues were an important issue for French newspapers and the French electorate throughout the war. The scandal of the use of torture (the electric gégène) had disastrous morale effects. By the end of the war human rights were a more important issue than the preservation of French Algeria. Public support for French Algeria was low by the end of the war, in part as a response to the human rights question. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, supported the Jeanson network, of which Henri Curiel was an active member. Human rights issues were widely reported and bitterly debated, and while the Paris Massacre may not have been constantly discussed as a specific event, it certainly falls into the overall issue of human rights which was very extensively debated.

Tazmaniacs 17:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)