Talk:1991 riot in Zadar/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

reassess

I think we need to reassess this article in light of the applicable policies, particularly Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Notability (events).

• The entire paragraph about the actual rioting is either unreferenced or referenced only using a report of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As an interested party in the conflict at the time, they weren't necessarily a reliable source. Also, their reporting of the event as such cannot be the sole indicator of the event's notability.
• Most other sources are problematic, too. For example, Marko Atlagić in the defence of Slobodan Milošević in the latter's trial. That kind of a source can be illustrative, but hardly authoritative. Indeed, that particular testimony has been disputed both by the prosecution and the judges, and this has been covered a bit in the niche press: [1] [2]
• The article content as is, is below the modern article standards.
• The event as such may well allow for a better article to be written:
  • if for example there are in-depth articles somewhere in reliable sources about this,
  • if some people still regularly recall or commemorate this event today, twenty years later
  • if there exist demonstrable lasting effects of the riot - for example if there's a record somewhere about Serbs from Zadar saying this event significantly contributed to their life
• However, all of this has failed to materialize in the last four years. The article was created in 2006 by a controversial user who never really contributed anything other than that. It has since been frequented mainly by other controversial users.

So, AFAICT, this could all just be integrated (merged) into the background section of Operation Coast-91, that talks of this period of the war on that particular area (Zadar and Šibenik). If and when more proper content is added that could justify the article's re-creation, then it can be re-created.

Does anyone object to the merge? Does anyone want me to go through AFD for this? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't seem notable at all to me. The relevant sections which might prove otherwise ("The civilian unrest" and "The aftermath") are supported by just two references, one of which is both a dead link AND supplied by FRY (hardly an impartial source) and the other is an offline source titled "Belgrade home service report" (whatever that is). A Google search does not yield any shred of evidence that these events ever occurred, and even if they did I don't see any reason to believe that they were relevant enough to merit a standalone article within the greater context of the 1991 conflicts. I would normally recommend merging any useful content into Operation Coast-91, but to be honest I don't see anything worth salvaging here. Unless someone can provide more sources and prove that this event was somehow notable, I'd support putting it up for deletion. Timbouctou 23:37, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Btw, this book, titled "Yugoslavia's bloody collapse" and which I assume deals with the dissolution of Yugoslavia in more detail, only gives a passing mention to the event, saying that "Croat youths in Zadar and Šibenik went on an anti-Serb rampage which was immediately followed by anti-Croat riots in Krajina". It doesn't give any more details, which I assume could be taken as an indicator of how relevant the "rampage" had been in the context of the hostilities in the area in the period. Timbouctou 23:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

The event is now largely forgotten. My impression is that the Croatian media more or less suppressed it. (For example, I remember that they initially reported damage to Serbian companies' property in downtown Zadar, but did not say a word about privately owned property being attacked. That's why I thought that the very title of this article is dubious and POV, but the fact is that private property was attacked too.[3]) The cited number of 168 properties destroyed is plausible, which would make this the largest peacetime unrest in Croatia in the last 20 years, and therefore notable. Also, for the record, I find the "requirement" that the Serbs of Zadar commemorated this event a bit odd. GregorB (talk) 21:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Removed one of the problematic unsourced claims. GregorB (talk) 21:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

H-alter generally corroborates some of the article's claims.[4] GregorB (talk) 21:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

• AFAIK we have no way of knowing or checking the exact number of properties destroyed, although it does sound plausible. In any case I don't think this could be considered a "peacetime" unrest as it is directly related to the hostilities which had been occurring in more or less violent forms in the early days of the 1991-95 war. It's also definitely not a "protest" so I will remove it from the "Protests in Croatia" category as well (a "riot" might be a more fitting description but we don't have that category yet). I agree that it is likely that the Croatian media had suppressed the event but that means that we have very little to go on in terms of keeping this article, expanding it or checking it for accuracy. And since we can assume that the national press had little reason to report about the full extent of violence, the idea that members of the group which was targeted might commemorate the event today sounds reasonable to me. So basically it seems that the Croatians suppressed it and the Serbs forgot about it. If that is the case, what exactly makes it notable? 168 properties or not, it doesn't seem to me that it made a huge impact in either Serbian or Croatian memories. Timbouctou 22:04, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
• I just skimmed through the H-Alter article, and I agree, it does corroborate some of the claims. The article could be used to improve the article, especially regarding the context of events although it does not give any exact numbers about the damage or victims. Regardless, I think it does establish some notability. Timbouctou 22:09, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
• And here's an March 2010 article published by Novosti which talks about it in more detail. Timbouctou 22:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, "suppressed" is maybe a bit of an overstatement... It may well be that the Croatian media weren't interested in inflaming the situation further in this particular situation. The war basically overshadowed the event and it seems fairly minor compared to what followed. (That's why I found this "commemoration" thing odd - I don't think that after a war that claimed 20,000 lives someone would be interested in commemorating broken shop windows.) I still think it makes the grade - if barely - regarding the notability, and there are some sources to cover it, albeit not in any great detail, obviously. GregorB (talk) 22:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, the way this topic is covered here simply does not do it justice. I personally think Saša Kosanović's article should be regarded a reliable source, but to a casual reader this might just look like a semi-random blog post. That simply does not automatically allow for the threshold of significant coverage to be met. Instead, the content that we have in this article should still be merged into a more general article, and that will immediately improve the verifiability, notability as well as NPOV compliance of both, because the context is common and today it's pointless to present these really intertwined issues separately as if they were some talking points. Indeed that's what I think it was originally. That's not unlike the original article on 'Špegelj Tapes'. People with axes to grind are a well-known phenomenon, and their grievance may well be entirely legitimate, but that doesn't mean we should keep lousy articles unfixed endlessly. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 23:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Ernest Marinković's article in Novosti and the mention of the event in Kosanović's H-Alter article (although the latter reads more like a column) all satisfy the conditions you enumerated when you started this discussion. The Novosti story it is an in-depth article - probably as in-depth as we will ever get at least - in a reliable source which includes statements of Serbs from Zadar saying this event significantly contributed to their life. It also includes quotes by a local court official, and at least two other eyewitness accounts, as well as the epilogue (the official investigation into the events was closed in 2002, said the županijsko odvjetništvo on the record). It also puts the number of destroyed houses at around 130 (while the ICTY witness testimony mentions 350). In short, the Novosti piece surely qualifies as significant coverage and the event is obviously notable enough to merit inclusion on Wikipedia. IMO there is enough material here for a few informative paragraphs but it is unlikely that the standalone article would ever be significantly expanded. I fully agree that it should be merged into a more general article but I don't think that Operation Coast-91 is an appropriate destination. This was a classic case of mob rioting which happened 3 months after SAO Krajina was declared and 2 months before operation Coast '91 took place (which was launched for strategic reasons anyway and probably had nothing to do with the riot). We should probably have a dedicated article which would collect in one place all the documented cases of non-militay violence and human rights violations that some Serbs were exposed to during the war, which would then talk about this riot, the Zec family murder, Žarko Domljan's statements about the "justified" sacking of Milan Škorić, the Sellotape case in Osijek, the Pakrac Field murders and so forth. On another note, I don't see any reason for the adjective "Dalmatian" in the title - I didn't notice any mention of Šibenik in the sources I found and even if there was a similar riot there than it must have been on a smaller scale. Until we decide what to do with it the article should probably be moved to something like 1991 Zadar riot. Timbouctou 16:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe Human rights in Croatia? Or something like... Terror and terrorism in Croatia? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, merging this into human rights in Croatia sounds reasonable, although the target article looks like it needs rewriting and updating. Timbouctou 16:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

So what's the consensus? To merge or not to merge into Human rights in Croatia? Timbouctou 00:30, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

It looks like to me that that's better than the status quo. Over there it can be a subsection under a new section called e.g. "Notable violations". Someone still needs to read through the newly-provided references and create proper citations, though. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge 2009

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Technical close no merge: The original proposed target article does not exist so it would be a move not a merge. A merge proposal that according to the template has been suggested since January 2009, but was not discussed until September 20011, and was not discussed further is stale. I suggest that a much clearer proposal needs to be put forward before this is relished. PBS (talk) 13:30, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

---

Talk:1991 Dalmatian anti-Serb riots#reassess ended in March - but maybe prematurely, a separate but still a generic article may well be warranted. The Zadar riot is still unfit for a standalone article, but I noticed recently that Marko Popović's father's property was destroyed in it so there's another source. More generally, in the meantime we got Murder of the Zec family in July. More recently we had an an analogous discussion at Talk:Persecution of Croats in Serbia during the war in Croatia. I now noticed the Croatian Wikipedia has what seem to be decent articles about hr:Ubojstva u Pakračkoj Poljani and hr:Ubojstva Srba u Sisku 1991.-1992.. A cover article for these could be called Persecution of Serbs of Croatia during the War of Independence or similar. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Like I said in February at Talk:1991 Dalmatian anti-Serb riots#reassess we really need a general article talking about these events. For the Zadar riot this article is probably the best source we are ever going to have - I remember noticing a mention of Popović's house being destroyed back then but it was just a passing mention in some interview he gave. We should start with an overview article and then if some sections about individual events prove to be too long it could be split into standalone articles. I'd personally prefer a single longish article than half a dozen two-paragraph blurbs. This should include the 1991 Zadar riot, Pakračka Poljana murders, Sisak murders and the "Cellotape case" in Osijek. How about Persecution of Serbs during the Croatian War of Independence? The important thing would be to define precisely what the article is for - namely persecution of civilians of Serb ethnicity in the Croatian-controlled territory between 1991 and 1995 and its context and follow up trials. Timbouctou (talk) 13:28, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I seem late to the discussion, but basically the war-time crimes sections that are here will be moved to the new page, while this one focuses on more "modern" problems? That seems to be a good idea, but at least a few references need to be added (like the one Timbouctou put up).--Jesuislafete (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me just add that merging 1991 Dalmatian anti-Serb riots into this article was not really beneficial on the whole, as we now have a rather large, overly detailed (given the main article's topic), yet vastly underreferenced section. GregorB (talk) 23:46, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Unmerged now from Human rights in Croatia, re-tagged per above. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.