Template:Did you know nominations/Reception of war criminals

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:47, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

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Reception of war criminals

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Created by Buidhe (talk). Self-nominated at 07:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC).

  • Given the nature of the subject and the wording of the hook, this nomination probably needs a very close look and perhaps reviews by more than one editor. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 11:30, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I will quote sources here. Note, all the news sources are hard news, not opinion pieces:
Sources

Brammertz, who was interviewed during a visit to Serbia, warned that in some countries, convicted war criminals are considered heroes and glorified by politicians, and war crimes are still being denied, sending out negative signals to potential witnesses.
“We cannot change the political reality, we cannot change the fact that in this country [Serbia], as in others, there are politicians who celebrate war criminals, which is an insult to the victims of these crimes, but we hope that there are enough politicians in positions who will support this process,” he said.

— Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, https://balkaninsight.com/2019/05/24/balkan-states-backsliding-on-war-crime-cases-hague-prosecutor-warns/

Politicians on all sides undermine judicial accountability for war crimes and support glorification of war criminals as heroes.

— Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-balkans-icty-legacy/u-n-war-crimes-tribunal-urges-balkan-leaders-to-carry-on-its-work-idUSKBN19F0J0

War criminals are still glorified across ex-Yugoslavia. ...
Unfortunately, political elites in other ex-Yugoslav states [besides Serbia] are just as quick to embrace their own war criminals. In September 2018, Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic greeted "General Mirko Norac" at an event marking an anniversary of a Croatian wartime operation, Medacki Dzep, to the cheers of those attending. Norac had been stripped of his rank after being sentenced for war crimes...
In Bosnia, supporters of suspected war criminal Atif Dudakovic took to the streets to protest his arrest in April this year. The popular general and 16 of his aides are charged with killing over 300 people, abuse of civilians and prisoners, and destroying dozens of Serb churches and religious buildings. Dudakovic has not yet been convicted, despite a video recording showing him ordering his soldiers to execute two prisoners "on the spot."...
In Kosovo, the state's parliament held a minute of silence to mark the death of convicted war criminal Haradin Bala in February this year.

— Deutsche Welle https://www.dw.com/en/hero-worship-and-villain-worship-in-the-balkans/a-46341120

The glorification of one's own crimes and the contempt for victims of others is a common denominator of sociopolitical existence in post-Yugoslavian societies.

— Branko Sekulić, Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2190&context=ree

Many Serbs consider Krajisnik and other Bosnian Serb wartime officials as heroes despite the U.N. war crimes convictions against them.

— AP https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-yugoslav-wars-the-hague-war-crimes-virus-outbreak-9d39e147fe9d6cfcb6894f6f73510357

There is no legal obstacle to war criminals holding public office in Kosovo after they serve their sentences, and senior officials have repeatedly given them jobs, attended ceremonies in their honour and praised them as role models.

— Balkan Insight https://balkaninsight.com/2020/10/12/a-hero-returns-how-freed-war-criminals-are-glorified-in-kosovo/

Despite mounting criticism, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has presented an award to a Bosnian Croat war crimes suspect, decorating a wartime Croat police unit for their “contribution to the liberation of Croatia”.

— Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/5/croatian-president-presents-award-to-war-crimes-suspect

The disheartening outcome of the legal proceedings [of the ICTY] seems to have enabled the rise of hate speech,, genocide denial, the glorification of convicted war criminals,, and the suppression of memorials for the victims in Republika Srpska... In addition to the explicit denial of the Srebrenica genocide, there is an ongoing glorification of convicted war criminals, through memorials, commemorative plaques, and the dedication of buildings.

— David Pettigrew, Mandate Interrupted: The Problematic Legacy of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 19 Wash. U. GLOBAL Stud. L. REV. 381 (2020). https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/wasglo19&div=20&id=&page=

the glorification of ICTY indictees makes it all the more difficult for Serbian citizens to honestly assess the crimes for which these individuals stand accused, let alone their state’s complicity therein.

— Spoerri, M. (2011). Justice Imposed: How Policies of Conditionality Effect Transitional Justice in the Former Yugoslavia. Europe-Asia Studies, 63(10), 1827–1851. doi:10.1080/09668136.2011.618682

Additionally, the trials were used by Serbian politicians to glorify war criminals...

— Stephanie C. Edwards, Healing and Peacebuilding after War: Transforming Trauma in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Routledge 2020 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8M3nDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT87&dq=glorification+war+crimes+Yugoslavia&ots=rQ_PksK-0u&sig=bfeqKasDt3zRfsVC1OEJU5x7tDQ#v=onepage&q=glorification%20war%20crimes%20Yugoslavia&f=false

In Republic Srpksa and Serbia today, popular culture canonizes Karadžic. Children sign rhymes that glorify the war criminal, and the Serbian Orthodox Church considers sanctifying him.

— Doubt, K. (2007). Scapegoating and the Simulation of Mechanical Solidarity in Former Yugoslavia: “Ethnic Cleansing” and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Humanity & Society, 31(1), 65–82. doi:10.1177/016059760703100105

In Croatia, the real obstacle is the absurd conviction, nursed for nearly two decades, that the Croatian army cannot be guilty of war crimes because it was defending the nation. This has had a very important consequence: that war criminals are regarded as war heroes.

— Slavenka Drakulić, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=147622
  • (t · c) buidhe 14:03, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I think with such a controversial hook, either sourcing needs to be given for all current subdivisions of the former Yugoslavia, or the hook needs to be more specific and less expansive. Does this happen in Slovenia, Macedonia, and/or Montenegro? BlueMoonset (talk) 01:16, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
  • BlueMoonset: Thanks for your comment. Here is a source for Macedonia[1] (elected to Parliament and called a hero). I can't find any for Slovenia or Montengro, probably because ethnic Slovenes and Montenegrins did not commit as many war crimes, which is why the hook doesn't say "all countries in the former Yugoslavia". It would be possible to focus on the worst offenders, Republika Srpska and Serbia, but I didn't want to be partisan since this also happens in most other ex-Yugoslav countries.
  • An alternative would be a hook that doesn't focus on Yugoslavia. But I thought it would be considered an easter egg: (t · c) buidhe 02:06, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
Tomb of Talaat Pasha in the cemetery of Monument of Liberty, Istanbul
Tomb of Talaat Pasha in the cemetery of Monument of Liberty, Istanbul


General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
QPQ: Done.

Overall: For DYK rules alone, this covers all the bases. I have looked through most of the sources, and although some might be easily and better replaced with more solidly authoritative sources, I am not going to object to them. However I do believe that this article has a major content problem, in that "Reception of war criminals" is a general title which ought to cover controversial examples from all time (as far as we can) and most countries, but the article deals with a very tiny sample, missing out many famous and obvious examples. The UK has been missed out completely, yet we can offer you Bombing of Dresden in World War II (in collaboration with the US and in conjunction with Death and state funeral of Winston Churchill), and British concentration camps (in conjunction with Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener#Memorials). The US can offer far more than Trump's pardonings; Mỹ Lai massacre (in conjunction with letting off Lyndon B. Johnson and everyone else except William Calley who got house arrest), for instance? No doubt there are many historical "heroes" with possible feet of clay? Or ancient baddies who maybe weren't so bad, but having lost a war they were slandered? Unlike many editors here, I don't believe in deleting articles unless they are ill-intentioned, mere pranks, illegal etc. I do believe in leaving weak articles (which I think this one is) so that they can in due course be improved. But your subject is so large that I think it would take a lot of work to bring the content up to a Start rating. However this is just my opinion. Narutolovehinata5 has suggested (above) that this nomination gets reviews from more than one editor, and I agree with that. Therefore I shall add a New Review link below in the hope that we get at least one more review here. Meanwhile, thank you very much for your efforts on this article, Buidhe. This subject is worth covering; it's just way more enormous than your article says it is. Storye book (talk) 15:41, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

    • It is correct that this is a general article. However, articles should not be required to meet the "broadness" criteria of GA to be eligible. I do believe that the article is start class according to the content assessment metric—"Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more."—and therefore acceptable for DYK. (t · c) buidhe 17:12, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Please could we have a second reviewer? I'm not ducking out as reviewer. I'm just supporting the above request that we have more than one reviewer. Thank you. Storye book (talk) 15:41, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

  • I have considered the comments above, and while there has been an attempt to make a start article, I can foresee arguments against it being a start article since it is somewhat limited in global scope. Is it possible to have at least all six of the populated continents represented on the list? I don't see anything from South America or Africa at this time. Flibirigit (talk) 03:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
    • I added examples from Latin America and Africa. (t · c) buidhe 04:41, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Thanks. Will review tomorrow. Bed time now. Flibirigit (talk) 05:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
        • I have thought about this overnight and I feel progress has been made, particularly renaming the article since previous comments and expanding the global scope. The introductory paragraph at the moment seems to be weighted towards Yugoslavia, which could be interpeted as not neutral. The proposed ALT0 could be misinterpeted in many ways, so I am leaning towards not recommending it. So far ALT1 is more promising, but I am curious if other hooks could be proposed that use some of the excellent photos. Flibirigit (talk) 16:44, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
          • @Buidhe: do you have time to look into the concern about the article's introduction? Thanks. Flibirigit (talk) 22:16, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Flibirigit I already fixed it. (t · c) buidhe 22:21, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
    •  Reviewing... Sorry, I was unaware of the updates. I will do a full review now. Flibirigit (talk) 00:08, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Nomination meets DYK requirements for newness, length, and sourcing, and no plagiarism issues were detected. QPQ requirement is met. I feel that all neutrality issues previously discussed have been resolved with the balancing of the introduction, adding entries every continent, and renaming the article. The text itself is also neutral in tone with all quotes cited. Furthermore, I feel that the article is at least a start class as required for DYK. All images used in the article are freely licensed on the Commons, and the image for ALT is clear at a low resolution and greatly enhances the hook. I am striking ALT0 due to the multiple comments above and how it could be misinterpreted. I am approving ALT1 with the photo. It is interesting, properly cited and accepted by AGF on the source. I also note that the source link to leads to a public access summary which contains enough information on page 14 alleviate any doubts as to the contents of the full book. Flibirigit (talk) 00:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
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