Talk:Račak massacre

Račak "massacre" ?

sadly moslty nationalist and hating people write down these wiki articles that reffer to war times on ex-yugoslavia lands. The račak "massacre" article... totally un-neutral. That incident has been solved years ago already, as an KLA setup. Even the investigators from those times revealed those people were actually Albanian guerilla fighters killed in action, after which their bodies were planted on the field (as they were massacred), but the bullet hit marks reveal the true secret... only that secret wasnt to be used in the war time it had to wait until USA would get their base on Kosovo, then they would admit anything eventough their whole excuse for bombing was that same set-up massacre (prepared together with KLA members). (Правичност (talk) 02:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC))

Weasel wording

The source says:

A major turning point took place on January 15, 1999, when forty-five ethnic Albanians were killed in the village of Racak. Although the attack was possibly provoked by a KLA ambush that killed three Serbian policeman a few days before, government forces responded by shooting at civilians, torturing detainees, and committing summary executions.

That's not equivocal. Adding weasel words like "alleged" is a bad move. bobrayner (talk) 18:46, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Not necessarily if there are other sources which support the assertion that people who were shot were actually members of KLA.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:14, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

None of the sentences referenced in the lede are in the source. Unless you point them here, i will remove it. This looks like source misrepresentation. We do not have deliberate massacre, widely recognised, or any other term that you try to push here in the sources. Obvious source misrepresentation. --WhiteWriter^speaks 19:37, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

The lede represents a summary of the article body and as such it is not required for each and every adjective in it to be a direct quotation from some reliable source. "Widely recognised" seems self-explanatory given the plethora of sources describing the event as a crime committed by Serb/Yugoslav forces:

• Human Rights Watch describes it as a war crime committed by the "Yugoslav Government"
• BBC described it as "Massacre at the village of Racak... ...where about 45 Albanians were murdered by Serb forces
• OSCE says "40 Albanian civilians were killed in Racak"
• The Guardian said "Serb forces entered the villages and shot anyone who tried to flee. Later they found a group of men in hiding and removed them for execution. The bodies of 45 of men, many of them mutilated, were found lying on a hillside."
• Washington Post said "In a Kosovo village called Racak, nearly four dozen civilians lay freshly dead in a Serb massacre that would change everything."
• ABC article described the events as "Racak was the scene of the massacre of 45 people, their bodies dumped in a ravine."

As for "deliberate massacre" - I have yet to see it described as a non-deliberate massacre :-) Timbouctou (talk) 13:28, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Nobody says there are no sources which present this event as massacre of the civilians. You could probably find much better sources than press releases (all except first which I don't find claimimg that 45 killed people were civilians). The point is there are reliable sources for different position which should be presented according to WP:NPOV, both in the text of the article and its lede. "non-deliberate massacre :-)" comment is attempt to ridicule opponents position which is not constructive.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

In fact the HRW piece is the only press release here (written by HRW), all others are news articles (written by journalists) published by reliable media outlets. Your assumption that HRW does not claim that 45 killed were civilians leads me to believe you did not read it all, as none of the Albanians mentioned by name and surname are described as combatants, and the article itself is titled Yugoslav Government War Crimes in Racak. As for your assumption that "there are reliable sources" for a "different position" - why don't you list some instead of assuming that they must be out there? ALL sources agree that there was a killing of 40+ people, and that it was the Serb forces who did the killing. The only point which is "disputed" is whether or not people killed were civilians - most of the world seems to think they were, while the Serbian media and assorted conspiracy theorists tend to disagree - because the event was used as a pretext for NATO intervention (which btw may be true but still does not negate any of the forensic facts related to the massacre itself). And since you and WhiteWriter have yet to present reliable sources disputing what is already widely believed about the event, I consider edits like these disruptive. Timbouctou (talk) 14:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The lede does not adequately summarize the last part of this article of 3,107 characters. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Antidiskriminator, where do you feel the neutrality problems are? bobrayner (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

State representation

I've added 'Yugoslav' to a number of segments which formerly stated 'Serb'. Obviously not everywhere, not where people have quoted things nor where it is certainly the case that it had been a Serbian measure rather than national. The word 'Serb' was over-presented on the article including where authorities denied access to William Walker. That much is plausible until you look at the source[1] which not only adequately mentions 'Yugoslav' within article (not headline), it states "border guards" which was a national entity. It is very hard to sift through every "perpetrator" listing to know whether it was Yugoslav or Serb because among those tried for the incident include Serb authority figures such as Sreten Lukić and Yugoslav national figures such as Defence Minister Ojdanić, needless to say Milošević. Janjušević (talk) 19:21, 15 November 2013 (UTC) Struck out comments by sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 22:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The point listed above is valid. "She said that before she joined them, a Yugoslav forensic team had performed autopsies on 16 bodies". [2]. --185.10.140.19 (talk) 14:48, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Official report states the conclusion is "undertemined"

Copying conversation from user page [[3]]

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Bbb23 (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I am not engaged in edit war but the other user who is constantly forcing subjective opinion and ignoring official reports. If needed I will go thru arbitration process to stop this one-side propaganda. Sasa778 (talk) 13:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Sasa778 if your edit is challenged (as it was - by me) the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved. The balance of sources (I believe) now accept that the Račak massacre occurred, finding one or two from 20 years ago that imply otherwise is not surprising! There is always a time when any allegation is unproven.

I could be wrong about this, but either way, the place to resolve the matter is on the talk page, not by edit-warring your own opinion, or that of a smallish minority, that the massacre didn't occur. Pincrete (talk) 16:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

For me, and I believe the rest of wikipedia community, quality of sources precedes sheer quantity of them. I am not claiming that massacre *did not* happened, just quoting the official report made by official EU forensic expert team (EU-FET) that results of their findings are *undetermined*. I don't find valid your stance that it is old report and there by automatically outdated and invalid because this is *the only* official report, first and last, a conclusion of more than 2 years of official research.

So I am not edit-warring my own opinion but the findings of EU-FET team responsible for settling this matter. Also, "small minority" argument is not accepted for me because this is completely subjective and, again, not valid argument by itself anyway.

I am waiting your response so will not revert back for now. Sasa778 (talk) 10:47, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

if your edit is challenged (as it was - by me) the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved.. That is policy - there is no exception just because you happen to think the old version is wrong.

The EU-FET team were not responsible for "settling the matter" - they were responsible for assessing the forensic evidence only. They concluded that forensically, a definitive conclusion was not possible, because of actions taken prior to them being brought in to investigate. They also said that the balance of probability was that these were civilians, and other probabilities - so it wasn't simply a "we cannot conclude anything". We state details of the team's conclusions already. What you are doing is working backwards from one aspect of that conclusion to try to imply something which is, broadly speaking, uncontested AFAIK. That killings occurred, which have come to be referred to as a massacre. The details of those killings DO remain contested. Forensic evidence is frequently non-definitive, but it is not the only kind of evidence and most sources treat the killings as historical fact.

There are various routes to settling this, but simply edit warring your preferred version isn't one of them. Your defence boils down to "I know I'm right, so I'm going to do what I like".

Any further discussion should take place on the article talk page - where other editors can contribute. Pincrete (talk) 13:40, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

continued on article page. Sasa778 (talk) 14:56, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

"The details of those killings DO remain contested" - so why you are claiming in the article definitive statement that this is a massacre?

"That killings occurred, which have come to be referred to as a massacre. " is not correct because massacre is defined in wikipedia as "the killing of multiple individuals and is considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when perpetrated by a group of political actors against defenseless victims.". The EU-FET te am did not concluded they were "defenseless victims" so the possibility they were armed KLA fighters remains.

"Forensic evidence is frequently non-definitive, but it is not the only kind of evidence and most sources treat the killings as historical fact" - most sources do not have scientific background but only propaganda. You cannot claim it is "historical fact" by only counting sheer number of (one-sided) sources.

I see your only strategy here is to put this article in limbo by claiming "the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved" and never to actually resolve it. From my stance, you are edit-warring this article by not having real arguments and only making discussion just for sake of it.

Unsigned post by Sasa778

What you are doing is examining the evidence and concluding that it doesn't satisfy YOU. That isn't what we do here. Almost all sources accept that the massacre took place, even if some details are unknown, and now unknowable. The report is much more conclusive than you are trying to argue "The report concluded that "there was no evidence that the victims had been anything other than unarmed civilians and that they had probably been killed where they were later found by the international monitors."[37] Addressing the claims that the dead had been killed wearing KLA uniforms which had then been replaced with civilian clothes, the report states that "...the clothing [of the dead] bore no badges or insignia of any military unit. No indication of removal of badges of rank or insignia was evident. Based on autopsy findings (e.g. bullet holes, coagulated blood) and photographs of the scenes, it is highly unlikely that clothes could have been changed or removed."[38] Ranta testified at the subsequent ICTY trial of Slobodan Milošević, stating that retrieved bullets, bullet casings and entry and exit wounds indicated that the victims were killed where their bodies were found and at approximately the same time. Of course it is possible that the EU team and numerous sources, monitors, journalists and witnessess who reported the matter immediately after the killings are all wrong - I wasn't there so don't know for certain - but the overwhelming weight of judgement is that the massacre took place. Finding single sentences in official investigations that could conceivably be read in such a way as to imply that the main facts are not known doesn't alter that fact. Pincrete (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

No, I am just quoting the official report while you are examining the evidence and looking for what you like to see.

"...but the overwhelming weight of judgement is that the massacre took place" - which overwhelming weight of judgement? Phrases like "most sources", "historical facts", "accepted truth" are totally subjective terms.

"Finding single sentences in official investigations that could conceivably be read in such a way as to imply that the main facts are not known doesn't alter that fact" - this "single sentence" is the conclusion of the official research.

"Of course it is possible that the EU team and numerous sources, monitors, journalists and witnessess who reported the matter immediately after the killings are all wrong..." - this is exact reason why you *cannot* put in the article definitive statement that it was a massacre.

So, even you accept that there is not enough evidence to support *definitive* statement to claim there was the massacre but still refuses to make a change in the article... Is that what you do here? Sasa778 (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a court of law and you should look up the meaning of irony. It's possible that everybody is wrong and the earth is really flat and was made in 6 days, with one day off, it's just that most experts disregard this possibility. The EU forensic team believed and stated that the preponderance of evidence was that these people were civilians, The exact circumstance of their death were unknowable - largely because those accused of committing the massacre had refused timely access to the evidence. Almost all sources accept that the killings occurred and that those killed were wholly or largely civilian, no serious source refers to it as 'alleged'. The only thing that is subjective is you trying to imagine this is a court of law where you personally have to be convinced before WP is allowed to record what the overwhelming proponderance of sources have accepted happened. Take this to an RfC if you want to change the text. Pincrete (talk) 06:58, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

No, you are behaving like a court of law by explicitly claiming that there was the massacre. By the way, if some day some official body responsible for determining Earth's shape conclude that their findings are "undetermined", I will change the article about Earth's shape to be "allegedly round", don't worry... Sasa778 (talk) 17:50, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

You keep referring to the EU team as the official investigation - it wasn't except in the limited forensic sense - and refer to one word in their conclusion, ignoring the bits you don't want to acknowledge. You also ignore the UN, Russia, the monitoring team and almost every historian and commentator, who all acknowledge that most of those killed were unarmed civilians. You are focusing on one word taken out of context to attempt to overturn an ocean of agreement and circumstantial evidence. Pincrete (talk) 05:13, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I am focusing on the fact that forensic expert team, who had given a official mandate to scientifically find what happened, said "we don't have any hard evidence to make a conclusion". And your stance: "yes, we don't really know what happened but "everyone" claim it was a massacre so it must be" does not quite meet neutral point of view. Let me remind you that I have just put word "alleged" to cover the fact that we don't really know, while you are claiming that it was a massacre while recognizing that we don't really know. Your arguments are contradictory and far from a neutral point of view. Sasa778 (talk) 16:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

"You also ignore the UN, Russia,..." - not quite: https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1507078695940501514 Sasa778 (talk) 16:44, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

"Later a special group was assigned to investigate the incident. It established that the dead were not civilians but militants who were dressed in civilian clothes after they had been killed in battle. The holes in their clothes did not align with the wounds. Yes, the case was investigated very thoroughly." - https://t.me/MFARussia/12109 Sasa778 (talk) 16:46, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

"Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States issued a joint statement condemning "the massacre of Kosovo Albanians in Račak on 15 January. All members expressed their revulsion at this act of mass murder" Are you really contrasting that joint UN contact group statement with two recent tweets by Lavrov citing a completely discredited Serbian/Belorussian forensic report? You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions. Take this to an RfC or similar. Pincrete (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

"Are you really contrasting that joint UN contact group statement with two recent tweets by Lavrov..." - this tweet is official statement from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (and Russia's stance regarding this matter, full info here: https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1799343/), and I referenced it to show you that not "everyone" is believing in what you are saying, but I think you already know that...

"...completely discredited Serbian/Belorussian forensic report" - who discredited it? or this is another "historical fact" and "accepted truth"?

"You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team..." - no, you are, by constantly neglecting their role and making subjective terms as arguments

"...and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions" - The only conclusion is: "The manner of death remained undetermined by the EU-FET, because the scene investigation and the chain of custody for the bodies from the site of the incident to the autopsy were impossible to verify by the team." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11182269/ Sasa778 (talk) 20:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions. Take this to an RfC or similar. Your chances of getting this changed based on a selective misinterpretation of what the EU forensic report says, ignoring what the balance of other sources say and two recent tweets by Lavrov are about zero IMO. You are entitled to believe anything you want, but WP simply records what the balance of WP:RS say and that is that most, if not all of those killed were civilians. If a few were KLA members or supporters - which has never been reliably established either way - that does not alter the fundamental character of the event.

The EU forensic report addresses and dismisses both the 'clothes changed' and 'moved from elsewhere' claims. You cannot claim it to be authorative when it suits your purpose and then dismiss it when it doesn't. In terms of its science it has never been challenged AFAIK - it specifically avoids coming to legal or political conclusions, it's science not a court. Pincrete (talk) 06:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Serbia

@Pincrete: Hello. The link you post leads to an article about a country created in 2008, which definitely did not exist in 1999. Also, no province is ever added, only a state within a country. — Ruach Chayim (talk) 18:43, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

The Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija is almost always referred to simply as 'Kosovo' in English - just as Republic of Serbia is called Serbia and 100s of other names are shortened. It would be wholly misleading to imply that Račak was geographically within 'core' Serbia, even if Kosovo has 'disputed' status. I believe that there is a WP policy about how to refer to Kosovo - whether as a region or an independent state, but couldn't find it immediately. Pincrete (talk) 18:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)