Humanities desk
< September 24	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 26 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 25

Is "push forward" of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers illegal under international laws?

According to our article on the pushback of migrants, this practice is highly illegal under not only Protocol 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits collective expulsion of aliens (though that obviously did not stop France from expelling Romani people en masse back in 2009-2011) but also the international law prohibition on non-refoulment. Governments of the countries that have been engaging in this practice, most notably Greece, Poland, and Lithuania, defend their policies by alleging that the influx of migrants is part of a hybrid warfare of "push forward" by their respective neighbors, Turkey and Belarus. However, I am also pretty sure that ton of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers engage in asylum shopping of their own free will and volition. Just look how many of them have died fleeing France and trying to get to the UK. Is "push forward" illegal under international human rights laws?

Also, I swear I am not affiliated with either the government of Belarus or the government of Turkey. I am not asking for legal advice. StellarHalo (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Most anything can be declared "illegal". But what would the punishment be in this case? <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 05:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Protocol No. 4 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states that collective expulsion of aliens is prohibited. It does not make a distinction between expulsion back and expulsion forward. --Lambiam 07:22, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What's the punishment, if any, for violating that rule? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:23, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

European Convention on Human Rights may be useful as an explanation of what happens if countries disobey the convention: "Any person who feels their rights have been violated under the Convention by a state party can take a case to the Court. Judgments finding violations are binding on the States concerned and they are obliged to execute them. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe monitors the execution of judgments, particularly to ensure payments awarded by the Court appropriately compensate applicants for the damage they have sustained."

In terms of punishment, well, it's possible to be expelled from the Council of Europe. Other than that, I don't know.

Note that Belarus is not a party to the convention or a member of the council, according to the articles I linked. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:41, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Dublin Convention places an undue burden on the EU states which have borders with non-EU states or are accesible by boat crossings. If the EU didn't want to see ugly scenes at the Greek border, then it shouldn't have enacted the Dublin Convention, then punished Greece over its alleged fiscal sins by imposing a severe years-long depression on its economy, which made it hardly likely to welcome migrants. (Of course, at the best of times Greece is unlikely to want large-scale Muslim immigration, due to sensitive cultural and historical issues -- we're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey next year). AnonMoos (talk) 12:25, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That reminds me that the Republic of Cyprus is famously opposed to Turks and Cypriot Turks, but has taken some Arab refugees from the Middle East. Apparently some of the formerly Cypriot-Turkish mosques are now used by these refugees. --Error (talk) 15:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1876 Ottoman Constitution

I'm trying to find the text of the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire in the original ottoman turkish script. I was able to find a PDF version of it (https://web.archive.org/web/20170201142642/https://anayasa.tbmm.gov.tr/docs/1876/1876ilkmetinler/1876-ilkhal-osmanlica.pdf) but I would like to copy parts of the text. Do you have any idea where to find a non-PDF version? Thanks! 80.104.99.96 (talk) 19:33, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you Google "covert pdf to text file", you will find a lot of software tools. Whether they can handle Ottoman Turkish script, I do not know. Cullen328 (talk) 00:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In that file, the text is in images, so you'll need OCR to get text characters from it... AnonMoos (talk) 03:36, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Modern vs historical combat losses

I started to wonder why even the possibly inflated Ukrainian figure of 56,000 Russian combat losses (let alone lower conservative estimates) during the invasion of Ukraine had such a debilitating effect on Russian military that a partial mobilization of at least 300,000 more was announced. First, Russian_Armed_Forces#Personnel says that there were nearly 400,000 contractors in the Russian Army as of March 2019 (by 2020 it reportedly increased to 405,000) and the number of Russian Ground Forces alone is given as 300,000 - which translates into merely 14% of losses among contractors or 18% among Ground Forces.

Secondly, the Roman Republic, for example, repeatedly suffered higher losses in single battles (let alone campaigns) and yet was able to rebound (e.g. 120,000 killed at Arausio, 67,500 at Cannae, etc). I do understand that in modern warfare the sheer number of manpower isn't significant anymore. But still why such comparatively low modern combat losses seem to be serious when several historical armies like Roman retained their combat capacities amid much higher losses and more limited manpower, as evidenced by List_of_battles_by_casualties#Classical_formation_battles? 212.180.235.46 (talk) 21:32, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Eventually, the Romans didn't bounce back. After the quasi-anarchic, "Crisis of the Third Century", there was a chronic shortage of military manpower in the 4th century, with only a few effective mobile units (the rest being static defense units). This led to the fall of the western Roman Empire, and the eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire converting to a quasi-feudal system, with cavalry gaining priority over infantry... AnonMoos (talk) 01:41, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Among other things, equipment losses were probably easier to replace: gladius ($) <<< T-90 ($$$$$$$$). Clarityfiend (talk) 01:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the ancient Romans were more willing to serve, and then there's that "defending the homeland from annihilation" vs. "invading the peaceful neighbor" thing. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:01, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not convinced we should take the enormous numbers given in ancient sources in any way seriously. Cheers ❖_hugarheimur 11:35, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Russia began this war without the required forces and capabilities to meet their objectives, and debilitating effects have been reducing their capabilities for years prior to 2014. This is actually the fifth go at some kind of mobilization, along with stripping forces from other strategic commitments and objectives. They have pared down their objectives. They gone from multiple offensive axes to a single costly and unsound one to a loss of initiative and to being unable to maintain an adequate defense. They have gone from attacks with multiple units to single unit and then to company and platoon sized. Numbers which can only be guessed at aside, your question assumes that there was reserve manpower available which could replace combat losses and overcome the increasing capabilities of the Ukrainian forces. This levée en masse does not show that some threshold has been crossed in available reserves, they began the war below that threshold.

For historical vs. modern losses, to the points above i would suggest specialization, smaller forces, unit cohesiveness, increased individual firepower, aimed fire, and massed formations. Historically armies lacked firepower and concentrated forces to concentrate firepower and achieve objectives. Modern armies with increased individual firepower, aimed fire, specialization and cohesiveness can concentrate firepower while dispersing forces. One simplistic part illustration is in Lanchester's laws, an linear vs. square relationship. How complex is the modern battlefield, how many specializations and capabilities are required to be maintained in order to maintain effectiveness? Artillery, armor, air power, communications, electronic warfare, and all the recent innovations in violence we are so capable of. Not only is each individual loss a greater proportion of the whole, each is much, much costlier to replace. As Clarityfiend point out in $'s, but maybe more importantly in time required reconstitute. Closing up and filling the gaps doesn't work any longer. fiveby(zero) 15:36, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two further points about the Russian Army's woes:

Total numbers of an army do not translate directly to the numbers doing the actual fighting. See our (rather brief) article on the tooth-to-tail ratio, the number of logistic troops required to keep combat units fighting, which in a modern army is about one front-line soldier to eight supporting soldiers; signallers, drivers, engineers, mechanics, cooks, clerks, medics and so on. This article estimates that of the 150,000 Russians involved in the intial invasion, only 17,000 were infantry or armoured vehicle crews.
In the peacetime Russian Army, the ranks of the infantry are filled with conscripts, while more technical roles which need a longer period of training; - drivers, signallers, gunners etc - would tend be "contractors" which in the west we might call "professional soldiers". Mr Putin decided not to deploy conscripts to Ukraine (sending conscripts to the Soviet–Afghan War probably led to the downfall of the Soviet Union), so scratch units of contractors had to be hastily assembled. Reports suggest that while they were able to fill the specialist roles in these units, there was a dire shortage of ordinary infantry. The lack of infantry to support Russian armoured forces in combat has surprised western observers. Additionally, if you occupy large tracts of territory, you need infantry to keep it occupied, especially if the inhabitants don't want you there. The high casualty rate has only exaserbated this shortage.

Alansplodge (talk) 18:33, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 14:33, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This reminds me that I heard (no reference) that the (stated?) goal of this mobilization is not deployment at the front line, but keeping control of the conquered territories, freeing the professional troops for the front line. The newly mobilized soldiers will have the minimum retraining for their role. You cannot make complete civilians into veterans in time for this war.

What will actually happen with the new mobilized will be seen.

--Error (talk) 15:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That would be the common-sense use of these conscripts, however common-sense seems to be another resource which the Russians are lacking. The Ukrainians are claiming to have captured their first mobilised Russian soldier, a rather chubby middle-aged bloke who claims to have been drafted in Moscow on 21 September and captured on the Kharkiv front on 27 September (see this YouTube clip). If you saw this nonsense in a film, you wouldn't believe it. Alansplodge (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]