Talk:12 April 1993 Srebrenica shelling

Starting Point

I have started the article with relevant references. Please contribute. Thank you! Bosniak (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Categories

I added relevant categories. 24.82.169.82 (talk) 02:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

And I removed most of them. Please add only the most specific categories, and not all their parents. Also, I removed the "war crimes" related categories, as the article doesn't indicate that this incident has been prosecuted as such. Feel free to add it back if I'm wrong about this and a source can be found. —Psychonaut (talk) 16:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

NPOV concerns with the title

I've tagged the page as having possible NPOV issues, mostly due to the title, which seems to be one of the many neologisms coined by the article's creator, User:Bosniak. None of the sources cited by the article refer to the incident by this name. I am also having difficulty finding any independent, published third-party sources using Google; a search for "Srebrenica Children Massacre" turns up mostly copies of this Wikipedia article or links to it. Is there possibly another name under which this incident is known? I wonder if "massacre" is the appropriate word, as this suggests a premeditated action against specific known individuals; the article doesn't indicate whether the bomb was specifically targetted at the children, or if it was aimed at some other target and went off course. —Psychonaut (talk) 16:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Psychonaut, you seem to lack some elements of human insight. When artillery are occupying a commanding position overlooking a town, that town contains an overwhelmingly civilian refugee population, a threat is made to attack the town, artillery hits an easily identifiable target in the town that happens to be a school and the slaughter receives widespread condemnation, it's up to the doubter to argue why this event is not a massacre. These killings were not part of any legitimate military campaign, they were part of an effort to terrorise a civilian population under siege in the context of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. You seem to take a perversely focused interest in querying the substance of articles relating to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and its aftermath. This is particularly noteworthy when Wikipedia contains so many other egregious deficiencies to which you could be devoting your attention. There is nothing NPOV about the title.

If you need an external reference for the use of the term massacre in reference to this event, try for starters a report in the St Petersburg Times about a survivor, the exemplary Sead Bekric - [1] Or an account at the Guide Dogs for the Blind Foundation Inc, who provided Sead Bekric with the guide-dog who helps him compensate for the loss of sight he suffered in the massacre - [2]

Regarding the title I would agree it could be improved, given that there were other occasions when children were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces in and around Srebrenica (town and municipality) and most notably in July 1995. It might be appropriate to change the article name to "Srebrenica Elementary School Massacre". It's not a word combination that you will find widely used as such by Googling but it is a perfectly intelligible and legitimate epithet for a uniquely identifiable event that merits ready identification. Opbeith (talk) 13:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Without the time to go finding more documentation of the nature of the attack, the Los Angeles Times journalist Mike Downey, honoured for his news column by the Los Angeles Press Club and hopefully able to meet Psychonaut's standard of acceptability, referred in an LA Times article in February 1994 to deliberate targeting by Serbian artillery fire from the hills. "A soccer ball rolled away. Schoolboys lay in the dirt, screaming. They--not professional soldiers, but youthful innocents--had been deliberately targeted by Serbian artillery fire from the hills. When the dust around him cleared, Sead Bekric could see many of his new friends sprawled around the playground. Some of them were dead. He ran to one seriously wounded boy's side. Sead was kneeling beside him when there came one more tremendous explosion. That was his last conscious memory." - [

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-27/sports/sp-27915_1_winter-olympics?pg=2] Opbeith (talk) 14:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Please stop reading into my words and assume good faith. I am not arguing that the massacre did not occur, or that it was not a massacre; I am asking whether (1) the event is actually commonly referred to as "Srebrenica Children Massacre" by anyone other than the author of this article, and (2) the school was deliberately targetted, as opposed to being hit by off-course artillery, or by artillery shot randomly into the settlement. Your response goes some way towards answering my second question, though it could do without the snide remarks; after all, none of that information is currently in the article. I agree that if children were deliberately targetted by the attackers, then it is indisputably a massacre of children, and thus my NPOV concerns have been satisfied. However, I'm still not sure if there isn't a better title for the article, since none of the article's sources actually refer to the incident as the "Srebrenica Children Massacre". Is this another one of User:Bosniak's many neologisms, or are there independent published sources that actually use this proper noun? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The United State Holocaust Memorial Museum website features the (Serb-demonised) Christiane Amanpour reporting on the evacuation of children from the massacre. [3]. The accompanying USHMM text reads: "On April 13, 1993, Amanpour reported on the evacuation of Bosniak civilians who had been wounded during a Bosnian Serb assault on the town of Srebrenica. She was shocked to discover that many of the wounded were children." Opbeith (talk) 14:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Psychonaut, what are you up to with this malicious meddling, which is all that removing the reference to Sead Bekric amounts to? Article subects have to be notable, there is no requirement for any person referred to in an article to be notable, although the international coverage of Sead Bekric and his courage and subsequent achievements certainly confirms him as notable. He is the child in Christiane Amanpour's report at the Holocaust Memorial Museum being lifted down from the lorry in Tuzla with his eyes covered with blood-stained gauze. Bekric is admirable for what he has done with his life since. I'm not clear what you're up to, but it's certainly not constructive.

Chuck Sudetic's New York Times article about Dr Nedret Mujkanovic provides further backing for the interpretation that this was a massacre.

"...

Attack on a Schoolyard

Dr. Mujkanovic said a surprise Serbian attack on a yard outside Srebrenica's refugee-packed school at 2 P.M. on April 12 produced the worst carnage he witnessed during the entire war.

"People were sitting around in front of the school," he said. "The children were playing football and other games. In less than one minute, seven rockets from a multiple-rocket launcher fell in an area about half the size of a football field."

Dr. Mujkanovic said 36 people had died immediately and 102 had been seriously wounded.

"The Serbs knew there was a camp of refugees from Cerska and Konjevic Polje in the school," he said. "They directed their fire at that location. It came completely by surprise. "There were pieces of women scattered about, and you could not see how to fit them together. I saw one dead mother lying on the ground and holding the hands of her two dead children. They all had no heads.

..."

[4]

If you want to argue that this wasn't a massacre, you need to shift the balance of probability. If you're tinkering with the article is based solely on your own uninformed speculation, you should think twice about interfering with other people's work. Wikipedia is about making information available, not about personal campaigns to restrict the availability of perfectly valid information. This is about children being slaughtered - you'd imagine anyone with common decency would conduct a bit of their own research before setting about dismantling the article. Enough, please. Opbeith (talk) 15:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOTMEMORIAL, and please stop claiming that I am arguing that this isn't a massacre, when my previous post explicitly stated that it was. I am trying to determine the name independent third-party sources use for this incident. —Psychonaut (talk) 16:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of "Wikipedia is not a Memorial". The massacre was a significant event - per the CNN coverage and the Newsweek cover showing Sead Bekric, and also because in the Srebrenica context it was evidence of a Serb disregard for civilian casualties even under the eyes of the outside world. As far as I know there is no specific name for the event. That does not mean to say the massacre is not referred to as an event. You suggested that the use of the word "massacre" might be inappropriate, suggesting there was a possibility that the shells (alternatively referred to as rockets) might have gone off course. That was why I said that if you were proposing that the title should be changed you would need to make the case that on the balance of probabilities it wasn't a massacre. You were certainly questioning whether it should be described as such and I can't see much point in challenging the title as being not-NPOV otherwise. Opbeith (talk) 17:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a very long debate over the article List of massacres, the debate centred around Psychonaut question about naming. It was eventually renamed List of events called massacres. See the collapsed box "Criteria for including events in this list" near the top of Talk:List of events named massacres. I suggest that is used as a guide to the naming of this article. -- PBS (talk) 09:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Postcards from the Grave reference

This is Emir Suljagic's account of the meeting he attended at which a Bosnian Serb officer claimed responsibility for the massacre (pages 107 and 108 of the UK edition of “Postcards from the Grave”). There is an element of confusion in that he refers to the beginning of March. However this appears to be the same massacre. I won't add information from this quote to the article until the date issue is resolved.

"But the conversation kept returning to the number of victims, to crimes against civilians, and the Serb colonel [ie Vuksic, commander of the Bratunac Brigade of the RSA Army] repeatedly declared that ‘the Muslims had killed sixteen members of his family’.

It is irrelevant who actually mentioned the massacre that had occurred at the beginning of March 1993 in Srebrenica. It was an artillery attack on the town during which a hundred people died because the shells hit a football ground where, during a brief truce, a football tournament was taking place. I do not know what mad Vuksic say in front of four witnesses that he had personally ordered the attack.

He did not even stop there. He went on to say that he would do it all over again, that he would issue such an order knowing what the consequences of the attack would be. I was translating under my breath, in order not to disturb his inspired speech, and I watched him speak; he firmly believed that he had done the right thing, he was so convinced that he would have done it again.

I was frozen rigid. In front of me was one of the people I had wondered about and despised hundreds of times over every time a shell exploded, because after all they had killed children, other people’s children whom they did not know. I looked at him and for the first time my feelings were mixed: instead of contempt I felt fear and I despised myself for being scared of him. In front of me was a man who had at least a hundred lives on his conscience, and I could not help feeling fear, because my instinct was telling me that this time he was on the winning side.

It had been one of the last attacks on the town, but the number of victims had been greater than ever before. Only four shells fell onto the concrete playground in front of the school, in the middle of the crowd. The scars left on the concrete are still there, along with the high white fence full of shrapnel holes. Pieces of glowing hot metal sprayed all over the people, tearing their bodies apart. Death caused by shells always reminded me of how fragile we are, and shrapnel wounds never ceased to horrify me. Four explosions left about a hundred young men dead on the ground, caught as they were running after the ball and an unknown number of mutilated who were not even admitted to the overcrowded hospital. Some other children play today on that same playground. I cannot help thinking that every time they run out of school to play a game of football, they are kicking the ball over the shadows of people who were dear to me.” Opbeith (talk) 22:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:Death Assessment Commentary

The article is off to a decent start. A few things that would help would be a little more background for those readers who are not familiar with the conflict. The main point of concern for me is the title. It seems a misleading, or there needs to be some clarification in the article.

• When was the incident first called the "Srebrenica Children Massacre"?
• The article states that the artillery bombardment resulted in the deaths of 62 Bosniak children and "wounding 152 others". Now, is that "other people" or "other children"?
• The title suggests only children were killed, and mostly refers to children's deaths, but later mentions "When the school was shelled over 100 people were killed", so it wasn't only children. (Hence my conclusion that the title is "misleading.)
• The title also suggests that children were the target, when it seems that the target was not only children, but rather the refugees, as a group, that were at the school. Perhaps "Srebrenica School Bombardment" or even "Srebrenica School Massacre" might be more accurate. Boneyard90 (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful comments, Boneyard90. The information available is confusing. I didn't create the article, but I suspect that the title of the article may have been a translation from the Bosnian. It's unclear whether the target was the school as a shelter for the refugees from Cerska or the kids' football tournament that taking place in the playground. The incident tends to be referred to descriptively rather than by a specific title but it is one of the incidents specifically cited in the original Karadzic charge sheet, where it's referred to as an attack on civilians targeting the Srebrenica playground.

Unfortunately like so many incidents it was dropped from the so-called "marked-up indictment" currently being prosecuted because of pressure to expedite the case, so it seems unlikely that further authoritative evidence will emerge unless the overloaded BiH War Crimes court eventually picks up on another individual's responsibility. Many of the witnesses/survivors disappeared, particularly in 1995. The doctor who treated the victims has since died two or three years ago and the one witness who testified at the ICTY has not responded to efforts to make contact. However the reason there was such horror at this particular atrocity seems to have been because amid the many horrific events at Srebrenica this one was particularly notable for the fact that many children were among the victims (though adults - including a woman holding the hands of her two children - also died).

The massacre also caught the eyes of the world through the photographs and reporting of the evacuation to Tuzla of the admirable Sead Bekric, a thirteen year old who was blinded in the attack - his picture featured on the cover of Time Magazine. (Horror at the complete disregard of the Serb attackers for outside opinion in carrying out this attack seems to have been one of the considerations that pushed the international community into establishing the UN-protected safe area, which ultimately condemned so many more to death).

I suspect that because of the circumstances it's quite possible that many of the specific details may never be resolved and the sources are not consistent. I've made tentative efforts to pursue information on the Bosnian side but unfortunately with other things to hand have never been able to pursue it in a determined way. I'll start off a couple more inquiries and see if anyone can come up with any useful sources. Opbeith (talk) 18:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

And how positive it is to have genuine issues raised in a "tackling problems together" way rather than as a full-frontal assault on the article!Opbeith (talk) 18:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I boldly moved the article to "12 April 1993 Srebrenica shelling" since it is in no way determined that the shelling was directed at the school directly, nor that children were the target. Sources speak of 14 dead children out of 56, thus, "Massacre of Srebrenica schoolchildren" is a false descriptive title. @Psychonaut: do you have any input?--Zoupan 18:06, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

What name do reliable sources use for the event? I asked this question repeatedly in the #NPOV concerns with the title section above but didn't really get a clear answer. If there is no consensus among reliable sources, then the best title for this article depends in large part on whether the children were deliberately and specifically targetted. Do we have any further information on that, besides what has been presented in the previous discussion, and besides your observation that sources say that children were a minority of those killed? —Psychonaut (talk) 20:36, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, in the absence of any further sources or discussion, I have no objection to keeping the title as-is. But I think that the matter should be reconsidered in case anyone has sources that would answer my questions above. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

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