Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bratunac massacre


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Spartaz Humbug! 20:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Bratunac massacre

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WP is not a soapbox. There are no sources available on google.books, the few websites I could google were either Serb nationalist sites or just referred to the article at B92, a Serb web page. The article (only reference provided) just repeats a Serb politician's statement. In sum: totally falls short of WP:V and there's no likelihood that verifiability will be achieved. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 20:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - Republika Srpska government officials have marked the massacre anniversary, it happened, and B92 is a reliable source. There is not only one source, look closer at the article. -- Cin é ma C 21:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The other source you provided is a historian's book that is as relaible a source as David Irving. -- Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 19:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - B92 is not the only source. If you search Masakr u Bratuncu you will surely find more sources.  The death of 69 people, 70 wounded and 19 missing... Worth keeping here. --Bolonium (talk) 21:54, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep: I think all ethnic based mass murders during wars are notable. I am also aware this is a stub and improvement would be beneficial. Ijanderson (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not so much notability, but verifiability. We even don't know if the said event did occur (ABiH + Muslim militants committing a massacre), or it is just a Serb Nationalist method to discount the Srebrenica genocide. Sorry, but a Serb newspaper article with reference to a SDS politician's statement is no way WP:V. The corresponding Serbian wiki article http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masakr_u_Bratuncu is also unreferenced. The book (Milivoje Ivanišević: Hronika našeg groblja- author is a well-known Srebrenica genocide denier) offered there is clearly WP:FRINGE. So, unless reliable sources are provided, this stub should be deleted. -- Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 08:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions.  —AustralianRupert (talk) 06:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * B92 is Serbia's answer to the UK's BBC. Obviously it's not as big or international as the BBC, however it is a national provider for Serbia with media via TV, Radio, Internet and by Phone. B92 is a reliable professional source. However in the last few months or so I have noticed that it has stepped up it's allegiance to Belgrade. Ijanderson (talk) 09:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete, Read this: Research And Documentation Center: THE MYTH OF BRATUNAC: A BLATANT NUMBERS GAME. Serbian Radical Party, Serbian pro-fascist movement, every year organises commemoration for alleged Bratunac casualties. On the link, you can read more detailes about number game. Those radicals do this every year after Srebrenica genocide commemoration as provocation. The problem is, there were no Bratunac massacre, except the one in 1992, when Serbs expelled all Bosniaks from the town. Give one, just one, WP:RS to verify "Bratunac massacre" title. There is also one more trick to this. Serbs commemorate all Serbian military and civilian casualties from the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, as the casualties of the massacre?! 80% of the Serbian casualties in Bosnian War according to the official data were soldiers died in the battles. They even commemorate those "victims" on the Military Graveyard (in Serbian: Vojničko groblje u Bratuncu). Some of them died in 1992, some of them in 1993, some of them in 1994. So, when you are talking about massacre, you have to provide verified facts for mass execution that happened in a specific time. This is not the case here. ICTYoda (talk) 19:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The link you have provided is an extremely pro-Bosniak source. "The Myth of Bratunac" is no different that titling a text "The Myth of Srebrenica", as some biased Serbian sources do. Both massacres happened, unfortunately.
 * The Serbian Radical Party is not a Serbian pro-fascist movement, it is a right-wing political party in Serbia.
 * You have to stop spreading your anti-Serb propaganda, trying to hide a massacre against Serbs will do no good to this free encyclopedia. Before I took action, ALL the massacres listed in the Bosnian war infobox were against Bosnian Muslims, NONE against Serbs or Croats. This is highly biased, as you yourself admit that a percentage (smaller than the accurate amount) of Serb civilians were also killed. So, instead of finding biased sources against this, try contributing by creating a more balanced outlook on the Bosnian war - no innocent victims are "worth less" because you believe their side is the "aggressor". -- Cin é ma C 19:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete - Back in May 1992, Serbs massacred 80 Bosniaks in Glogova. If we are going to talk about "Bratunac Massacre" then we may as well talk about real massacres, those deliberately perpetrated by Serb forces against Bosniaks in Bratunac. More than 1000 Bosniaks were killed in Bratunac in 1992. Bratunac was a Muslim town which was ethnically cleansed froom Bosniaks by Serb Army. Serbs committed horrendous crimes against Bosniaks in Bratunac and surrounding Bosnian Muslim villages. You quoted source for your claim to be "Milivoje Ivanisevic" - Serbian proapgandist and Srebrenica genocide denier. He has no credibility, authority, or respect to be taken seriously for anything. He is one-sided pro-Serbian extremist who repeatedly denied Serb crimes against Bosniaks in Podrinje. Serbs used to re-write history with lies about 700,000 dead Serbs in Jasenovac (when in fact only 50,000 died as per the US Holocaust Museum data). Now you want to re-write the history of Bratunac, former Muslim town from which you expelled Muslims? It's not going to work. The International Tribunal at the Hague has already spoken. The facts: Serbs are overhelmingly responsible for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Court has spoken. Do whatever you want to do, but you will never be able to change these facts. Bosniak (talk) 01:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC) Comment
 * You are not telling the truth. The link is not pro-Bosniak source at all. It is multi-ethnic Research and Documentation Center. It's sponsored by Norway, Britain, Germany, Switzerland etc. RDC cooperate with: The University of Georgia, The Inter-Parliamentary Union British Group, The Royal Norwegian Embassy, The Glocal Forum, Swiss Peace Foundation, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights etc. Read it here . The curiosity is, that Serbian side used data from RDC in the Bosnian v. Serbia Case for Genocide as an example of neutrality. So please, try not to spread propaganda, rather check it first. ICTYoda (talk) 20:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Regarding massacres, if you want to write about it, you have to provide verfied facts. I will be the first to support you. But, let's take one example. Few years ago, Serbian media started a campaign about 3,500 Serbs killed by Naser Orić, Bosnian commander of Srebrenica. They sent thousands of "documents" to ICTY. After that, ICTY started a process against Naser Oric, and what happened? He was found not guilty. Furthermore ICTY concluded that there were no 3,500 Serbian casualties, but 5 soldiers killed as POWs. So I am very aware of what propaganda is. ICTYoda (talk) 20:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all, I can financially support the Serbian Radical Party here from Canada, but that doesn't mean the party is neutral, now does it? That site doesn't even have a single Serb working there, which can be seen from the names of the people working there. So much for your claims of a multi-ethnic Research and Documentation Center. Furthermore, the website is in English and Bosnian, and doesn't have Croatian and Serbian, the other two official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
 * If the Serbian government claims the death 3,500 dead civilians (this is your information, not mine), I'd like to see some sources, please. Maybe Naser Oric didn't kill 3,500 Serb civilians. Because there is no evidence showing that he did it, we can't know, but does that mean that the Serbs weren't killed by someone? But I'd like to see a source for your claim, preferably a list of the 3,500 Serbs that were killed, this is new information to me. -- Cin é ma C 21:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete per cogent arguments from ICTYoda and Miacek. The UN reported that the Serbs counted those of their paramilitaries who were killed attacking Bosniak villages in the Srebrenica region as civilian casualties. The article exploits Wikipedia as a vehicle for Serbian historical revisionism. Writegeist (talk) 20:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep as per Cinema, Bolonium and Ijanderson. --A.Molnar (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: A.Molnar's vote seems to be WP:JUSTAVOTE and WP:ILIKEIT Ijanderson (talk) 13:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is a source by AFP: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iwY6CmRCt-iyUFVkY5tSO0voidUg

The Bratunac massacre happened, despite the efforts of some groups to keep that from the world --A.Molnar (talk) 22:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Editorially, the AFP report does not corroborate or verify the Serbs' Bratunac massacre fiction; neither does it cite any verification from any independent source.  It  merely reports a wreath-laying ceremony, and in that context it quotes a Serbian official's reiteration of  the Serbian claims. The report does not meet WP:BOP. It is irrelevant to this deletion debate. Writegeist (talk)


 * Delete and/or redirect Where's the beef? For an alleged massacre we have two lines on info on the matter and one citation. Now I'm all for the addition of info but this would be better in a much more firmly established article I think. Alternatively, if you can add some info the on the massacre then I may reconsider my position here. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:32, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The article was just created. Do we have to build a featured article in a matter of days here? There are already reliable references and this is just an attempt to remove all mention of Serb deaths during the Bosnian war. -- Cin é ma C 06:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment re. Cinema's comment above: there are no grounds for the assertion that this is "just an attempt to remove all mention of Serb deaths during the Bosnian war." Rather, it is an attempt to remove an article that violates WP:V. To keep the article, the purported massacre would have to be verifed in reliable sources. Cinema, can you achieve that? If so, I would of course oppose deletion. Writegeist (talk) 07:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete: Per ICTYoda, I want to see some "real" proof that this so called "massacre" took place. Ijanderson (talk) 13:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete: I will apologize in advance for the long comment I'm about to leave, but I think it's necessary to sufficiently explain what's going on here to users who are perhaps not as familiar with the peculiarities of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.


 * So let's look at some facts to introduce the topic. 1.) According to the most comprehensive survey of war deaths in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some 83.3% of the country's 39,685 civilian victims were Bosnian Muslims. 2.) As should be well known by now, this number / percentage is likely to be higher, considering that many of the several thousand civilian victims of the Srebrenica massacre reported their loved ones as soldiers to receive state benefits. 3.) According to the president of Sarajevo's Serb Citizens Council, Mirko Pejanovic, about one fourth of the 12,000 victims of Republika Srpska shelling during the siege of Sarajevo were Bosnian Serbs.


 * It doesn't take a mathematical genius to realize that the civilian casualties of the Bosnian war were overwhelmingly Bosnian Muslim. Why do I point this out? To counter claims by users such as Cinéma that there's obviously something biased with Wikipedia's coverage of the Bosnian war because the massacres covered are disproportionally those of Bosnian Muslims. I'm sorry, but I have another explanation for this phenomenon - perhaps it's because the overwhelming majority of significant war crimes against civilians were indeed directed against Bosnian Muslims. This is a fact backed up again and again through such credible sources as the Research and Documentation Center and the findings of the ICTY. It also just plain makes historical sense. Through most of the war, the Sarajevo-based government waged a defensive struggle, holding on to only the most overwhelmingly Bosnian Muslim portions of the country.


 * Now please don't get me wrong. I am in no way implying that Serb civilian casualties were nonexistent or insignificant. In fact, I'm a heavy critic of the Izetbegovic government and I even wrote an extensive article about one of the most infamous war criminals in the Bosnian army, Jusuf Prazina. Certainly, Serb civilians in Bosnian government territory had a very rough time; there were a number of detention camps, it was not uncommon for POWs to be killed, fighting-age men to disappear, etc. I agree that it's important that these events receive attention on wikipedia (as with, for instance, the article on Mušan Topalović). What I am saying, however, is that we let go of this ridiculous idea that a balanced account of the Bosnian war requires some sort of 1:1:1 proportion of war crimes among the three major sides - that flies against all historical reality.


 * In regards to the article here itself, let's look at what it contains. The only major source is B92. Yes, certainly, B92 is a very credible site (I'm a fan myself), but that doesn't mean that every single piece of historical information they list is accurate. After all; B92 is a media outlet, not an academic journal focused on the events in question. Oslobodenje, Sarajevo's most respected newspaper, is equally credible, but I'm sure you'll find numerous stories by them in the 90s with quotes from Bosnian government officials about an alleged 200,000 war victims. That figure was frequently cited in numerous credible media outlets, but we now know that this information is false. What we basically have here is Republika Srpska officials claiming that people were massacred, even though the numbers they list make no sense given what we know from the RDC and ICTY. I suggest everyone here read [|this] section of the Srebrenica massacre article for a more thorough explanation of how reports of Serb victims in the Srebrenica region (including Bratunac) was frequently exaggerated for political purposes.


 * To give but the most famous example, the near by village of Kravica was often the standard reference point for examples of henious Bosnian Muslim crimes against Serbs in the region. Numerous radical Serb sources, including the "Hronika naseg groblja" listed under "see also" in the Bratunac massacre article, typically claimed that some 350 Serb civilians were murdered in cold blood on Orthodox Christmas Eve. The reality? The ICTY determined, based on the army of Republika Srpska's own internal records, that 43 people were killed in an armed skirmish, 13 of whom were civilians. It's also important to note that even the B92 article admits that the number of victims includes both civilians and military deaths (again, the Srebrenica massacre article's sections goes into more detail about this). How much sense is there to label the death of VRS soldiers in armed battle a "massacre." In short, before starting an article of this nature we'd have to have detailed evidence, preferably from an international tribunal, about what really happened here. Surely the Serbian government reported such atrocities to the ICTY in the Oric case; isn't it a little suspicious that nothing ever came of it?


 * Essentially, we need credible sources for something like this. A B92 article quoting Republika Srpska officials and a discredited nationalist tract wont do. Live Forever (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Revise. I went to the article expecting to find more information about the Bratunac massacre described in Hasan Nuhanovic's "Under the UN Flag", his narrative of events leading up to and including the Srebrenica genocide. Setting the scene and indicating why the Dutchbat III's training should have prepared them for the possibility of a genocidal onslaught against Srebrenica is a description of events preceding July 1992, at the bottom of page 4 and the top of page 5:


 * "At the very beginning of the conflict (aggression), precisely in May 1992, the Bosnian Serb forces rounded up the entire Muslim population of Bratunac town and the surrounding villages and brought them to a soccer field.  Women and young children were then deported towards Tuzla and men and boys were separated and taken to an improvised detention facility.  In the nearby primary school the Bosnian Serb forces tortured and executed hundreds of Bosniak males.  Their bodies were buried in mass graves.


 * At the same time the the Bosnian Serb forces burned villages in the area and committed atrocities. The first village in which atrocities were committed was Glogova, several kilometers away from Bratunac.


 * All men and boys around two hundred, were rounded up, killed and buried in a mass grave.


 * Many other villages in the same area had the same or similar fate during the spring of 1992."

The article as it stands appears to lack any account of its subject. Opbeith (talk) 23:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Opbeith, see my response above. In Bratunac and around Srebrenica area, more than 4,000 Bosniaks were killed in 1992. Bosniak (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete - Alright, those are some fairly convincing arguments. I'm not an unreasonable man. Delete it. -- Cin é ma C 02:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Cinema C, you have identified a basic problem. I'm not aware of the existence of an honest account of the specific sufferings of innocent civilian Serbs in the Bosnian war on Wikipedia. Serbian campaigners for truth and justice appear to have too much on their hands simply trying to get their compatriots to acknowledge what happened, so the propagandists tend to dominate the Wikipedia history of Serbia's and the Serbs' involvement in the Bosnian war.

That seems to be part of the reason for the apparently imbalanced listing of massacres in the Bosnian war that you remarked on. The other is of course that the imbalance is rooted in the grim reality. It's not a question of just the deaths of Serbs and Croats going unmarked. There are scores of notable massacres of Bosniaks/Bosnian Muslims that have no article at Wikipedia recording them, like the massacre at Zaklopaca (near Vlasenica) on 16 May 1992, to take one example of many. Opbeith (talk) 08:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete; doesn't seem to be verifiable with multiple, independent, non-biased sources at present. —Psychonaut (talk) 12:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - it seems the debate should be closed, as the author of the article did admit the arguments for deleting the page were convincing and has changed the vote. -- Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 13:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment -- I would like to remind everyone of the basic policy of verifiability. Any personal opinions we might have of whether the accounts of this massacre are credible are irrelevant, if there are authoritative, verifiable references that report it.  This policy is intended to short-circuit endless, circular arguments over "truth".  Did Turks massacre a million Armenians in 1916?  In some circles reports of this massacre are extremely controversial.  We don't let those who claim it didn't happen suppress coverage because they challenge the credibility of those reports.  I suggest the commemoration described in the B-92 report is worth covering, even if only one ethnic group found the account credible.  Some contributors here have complained that there were other massacres alleged to have occurred in the Yugoslav wars that are better documented.  So what?  Shouldn't we cover every massacre for which there are verifiable sources?  That massacres exist with better references is not an argument for deleting this article -- it is an argument for covering the other massacres as well.  Geo Swan (talk) 05:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Geo Swan, you address us with apparent authority on the subject of verifiability and then you seem to misunderstand the basic principle. Publication of a report provides a basis for verification, it doesn't confer authority in itself.  Even reliable sources are not necessarily infallible, but in this case the reliability of the source is irrelevant.  The report itself simply does not provide the information that it's alleged to.


 * When you say "I suggest the commemoration described in the B-92 report is worth covering, even if only one ethnic group found the account credible." you move the discussion of the article's subject from the "Bratunac massacre" to the "Bratunac massacre commemoration".


 * You seem to have noticed the fact that the reference does not provide any facts about the massacre itself, it simply reports the comment of the president of the "Republic of Srpska Government Committee for Upholding Traditions of the Wars of Liberation" baldly asserting that "It’s well known that on July 12, 1992 69 civilians were killed, 70 wounded, while a further 19 are still listed as missing in three villages—Sase, Zalazje and Biljača".


 * I am not aware of any grounds for believing that either the Committee or its president Branka Šljivar should be considered a reliable source. Before suggesting that the credibility of the report is being questioned in order to "suppress coverage" of the "massacre", perhaps you could first check the verifiability of the article's content. Opbeith (talk) 13:48, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.