Talk:Soviet OMON assaults on Lithuanian border posts

Untitled

Yet again you see POV where no POV should be seen - word "massacre" itself is not POV, it simply describes an event when people are killed at one place. There are many articles titled massacres (including killings of just a few people at one place perpetrated by the police or the army), such as Orangeburg massacre. And, in this case "Medininkai massacre" gets more hits on Google than does "Medininkai incident". Burann 12:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

For reference (from our friends over at answers.com):

• Massacre: The act or an instance of killing a large number of humans indiscriminately and cruelly.
• Incident: (1) A definite and separate occurrence; an event. See synonyms at occurrence. (2) A usually minor event or condition that is subordinate to another. (3) Something contingent on or related to something else. (4) An occurrence or event that interrupts normal procedure or precipitates a crisis: an international incident. Renata 14:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Requested move: Medininkai Incident→Medininkai massacre

Should the article be moved back to its original name Medininkai massacre per reasons listed above?

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support The killing were reportedly carried out execution-style, after victims were disarmed. Doc15071969 18:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support --Burann 13:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC) (For the reasons said above.)
• Oppose. We don't need inflammatory wording in Wikipedia. When several officers of customs frivolously set up by regional authorities are killed during a skirmish with lawful authorities, it is not a massacre, it is an incident. --Ghirla | talk 14:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It is hard to say what was lawful at the time - Lithuania was a de facto independent country, similar to e.g. South Ossetia these days; and, what is more important, as I have explained and given examples in Talk:Rainiai executions, massacres done by government, army or police are still massacres; massacres where just 3 or 4 people were killed are also called massacres in Wikipedia. Burann 14:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

    "De-facto independent" is just your POV; it was not recognized by any government in the world. As for other examples you cite, well, it's the problem of their authors that they can't find a more suitable word. --—Ghirla | talk 14:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

    This is exactly what "De facto independent" means - independent (politically, issuing and being able to oversee laws in the area), but unrecognised. Current examples can be South Ossetia, Abkhasia, Pridnestrove, as well Taiwan. And when so many authors uses it this word is not that unsuitable I think. Burann 14:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

    By the time Medininkai massacre took place Lithuania was not really unrecognised either. First state to recognise Lithuania was Iceland, which happened in February of 1991, and then the recognition continued as other states followed the suit.DeirYassin 14:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support. If massacre is not neutral, then so is incident (in that case it should be event, however, I still prefer massacre, because this name is more popular in English too and, as the dictionary excerpt provided by Renata3 shows and as it was said already, it is merely a word with a meaning that fits in this case, and is not POV on itself). --DeirYassin 14:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Kazak 05:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

• The article does not give the reason for neither name, since it is written poorly. With massacre vs. incident it is very simple. If both sides were armed, then it was incident. If there were only civilians on one side, then it is massacre. The speaks about policemen on border, but gives no circumstances. 18:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Now I see that the article is written without any particular desire to present facts. Easily fixed. mikka (t) 18:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

To my knowledge, the custom officers weren't armed. By the way, where did you got the information about this Krakūnai incident? I don't have information that such incident/massacre indeed happened, my information says that one person was killed there (and it happened in May 18th rather than July 18th), and seven people at Medininkai. Burann 18:15, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've provided the exact names, and hope that our colleagues from Lithuania may easily double-check the facts by making 2-3 phone calls. mikka (t) 18:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you did, but what are your sources? Thanks in advance for answer. Burann 18:36, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Let's say old KGB skills :-) Text corrected (could not read commas; poor old eyes). mikka (t) 19:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting the text. So, you think the article should stay about all the assaults in general, not only about the Medininkai massacre? By the way, I think the Russian names for the towns here are wrong - the real Russian names are similar to Lithuanian ones, but written in cyrillic. While the names that are given currently are I guess old names, which weren't used anymore in the Soviet Union (similarly to e.g. Dvinsk, Vilna and such). Burann 23:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be interesting to collect data about all border incidents. They are prety small texts, and one article for all will be enough. mikka (t) 23:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Names: Basically, you are right. These Russian names were used when the incidents happened, and they are useful when searching for the incidents in Russian texts (and Polish ones). mikka (t) 23:47, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

My two cents: I like the current title. However, going further, I think Lithuania was not the only one with such border attacks. What about Latvia, Estonia? The article could be expanded to include all of it. Would be really interesting. The only thing is that info is not that readily available. 1990-91 were very confused years and the Internet did not exist... Renata 03:02, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Krakunai

• border guard officer Gintaras Žagunis who was killed at Krakūnai border post on July 19th, 1991
• On 19 May 1991, Gintaras Žagunis, an officer at the Krakūnai border crossing point at the Lithuanian-Belarus border, was shot dead while on duty.
• On May 19, 1991, in Krakūnai Border Check Point, the shift commander was killed
• Short biography says May 19
• And some other Lithuanian-language sources say it's May 19. But I have to say, I have never heard about it before. Kudos, Mikka. Renata 05:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

1. As user Ghirlandajo have said, the usage of the pharse "Lithuanian citizens" that is being reintroduced is doubtful; Lithuania was then not recognised as independent by many countries, many Lithuanians still had Soviet passports. Why not just use "Lithuanians" instead? Burann 23:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

If you want to speak formal, they were citizens of Lithuanian SSR, according to passports of Lithuanian SSR (like for any other Soviet Republic). "Lithuanians" is an ambiguous term. mikka (t) 01:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll let it be this way. Burann 17:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

2. As for the term, the term that is most common in English usage should be used. Do a Google search on "Medininkai massacre" and on "Medininkai incident" and you'll see that there are only two websites mentioning "Medininkai incident" and one of them is this talk page. As well, the guards were disarmed and then executed by shooting at their heads, not killed in a battle. And also, the above voting as well is in favour of such naming (I know it probably has no power however because it was generally agreed upon to do an article about all the attacks instead of a separate article, but still my other explainations here counts). Burann 23:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Why this is not in the article, then? mikka (t) 01:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have added information now. The reason why I haven't added it previously is because I usually don't like adding information when I don't have a written source close to me *right now* so I could check that everything is 120% correct. Anyways, what I wrote now is what I remember well that I have read, I remember hearing some other things in relation to the incidents, but I would add them only if I would get the sources close to me, and the sources on these events are quite hard to find in Latvia now. Burann 17:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Currently the way the Tomas Sernas' involement is written, leaves an ambiguous impression as to whether he was handicapped as a result of the assault, or was handicapped prior to the assault. Don't want to change it without knowing the facts. Dr. Dan 18:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, he was handicapped during the attack - my English is, however, far from good, it is not my native nor my first foreign language, sorry. I don't see any ambiguity, but as English is your native language as I understand and you see it, that means it is probably there and you should correct it. Burann 18:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

3. A minor edit with a major meaning: the investigation proved that the officers were unarmed at the moment of attack. This fact's supported by trusted sources of VSAT (Customs Security Department). --NoTime 20:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Witness naming policy?

Does wikipedia really need to provide the new names of people in a witness protection program? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_OMON_assaults_on_Lithuanian_border_posts#Investigation_and_trials Pär Larsson (talk) 17:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not a real "witness protection" program. Details of his identity change are widely reported and known. His cover 9if there was any to begin with) is blown wide open. In this case, the details are needed as he is being tried under the new name for something he did under the old. Renata (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Strive

The second sentence of the article uses "strive" as a noun. I would have expected "strife". Is this a US English / British English difference? Or just a mistake? Or is there something else I am missing? Maproom (talk) 06:25, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Survivors?

If there were 60 people injured, how can Tomas Šernas be described as the only survivor? DS (talk) 13:39, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

He's the only survivors of Medininkai incident. Renata (talk) 16:09, 6 July 2014 (UTC)