Talk:Serbs of Croatia/Archive 1

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Ethnic cleansing

RickK got into the middle of an edit war and took a side which is preventing me from adding a related URL and NPOV text. The number of Serbs in Croatia has dropped due to what is known as ethnic cleansing, the figures state it, some might want to deny it but fact is that there were some 600 thousand in 1991 and only 200 thousand in 2001. But seeing how RickK accuses me of inputting my own POV perhaps he should get in on the discussion and give us his reasons for his particular POV.

The HRW report goes into detail about the impedance of the Croat government in the attempted return of expelled Serbs. This goes to prove that the cleansing was intentional and that the expulsed wish to return.

• HRW report

User:Igor 1:35, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Point to anything I wrote on the page, and then explain how I was involved in the edit war. You seem to know an awful lot about terminology and how to manipulate things on this site for someone who's relatively new. RickK 02:44, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment about my being a quick learner. Besides, I am not as fresh as Mir Harven is. You did not write anything in particular, you just cut what I had previously written and pasted whatever gibberish Mir had added, and besides, he is fresher than I am, if it is in any way an issue about "who was here first".

Igor 0:30, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

--

What I wrote does not in any way contradict the Human Rights Watch report. It is almost common knowledge that Tudjman was plotting the whole thing together with Milosevic. They each wanted "their" territory ethnically "clean" and so they made numerous deals to accomplish the same -- you don't do anything for your people here, I'll invade that area; in return, I won't do anything for my people over there so feel free to invade. The only exceptions were when either side happened to entirely overpower the other, so there was no such negotiation, they just went in and followed their own agenda.

Furthermore, obstructing return of refugees is nothing new to neither Croat nor Serb authorities -- the very same thing happens on both sides of the border. In fact, in Bosnia, people are said to actually have more trouble returning.

Trying to paint the picture of how the government of Croatia is Evil and Wrong, while not mentioning the government of Republika Srpska Krajina or Republika Srpska (in Bosnia), is entirely propagandist. Very much in Igor's general style, if I may say so.

And while I certainly don't condone any abuses the Croatian government commits, they must be given at least as much credit as to acknowledge that all they do is in the open: open to critique from HRW, open to prosecution by the ICTY! Removing the link to the court which indicatively happens to indict a lot of Serbs and a lot less Croats just shows how biased your view really is.

I implore the highly ranked editors of Wikipedia not to succumb to this seasoned piece of Serbian propaganda that takes every opportunity it can get just to make Croatia look like the worst thing since Holocaust.

--Shallot 11:28, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I won't get into a political discussion with Shallot and his political prejudices which seem to be quite opiniated on a wide variety of topics from Jasenovac to the demographics of Croatia. Let's get one thing out of the way, sir, are you denying that there were some 600 thousand Serbs according to the 1991 census and only 200 according to the 2001 one? Did the Croat Army or did it not organize a military operation called 'Storm' (Oluje) which had as a result the massive flight of some 200-250 thousand Serbs from the Krajina? Well that is what I am writing about in this section of the demographics of Croatia, it is a question of facts.

Actually, you're not writing about this, you're extracting a handful of convenient facts and writing them down with a supposedly simple marker, "ethnic cleansing". Another side to that coin was that at that time, there were hundreds of thousands of displaced Croats in Croatia and elsewhere that used to live in areas the new Krajina government occupied. Shorly before the operation "Storm" and during it, Tuđman made a public appearance on TV (that was viewable in Krajina) saying that a military action is starting and that people should not evacuate -- and yet they did. Admittedly, I would probably err on the side of caution given Tuđman's general untrustworthiness.

But, that's not all. Some Croatian newspapers have recently (and allegedly, I haven't seen this myself but have heard of it) come into possession of video tapes showing how the Krajina government carefully trained the civilian population on how to quickly evacuate with all their belongings in case of emergency. And guess what, that's exactly what happened, the international news agencies taped thousands of Serbs going to Serbia via the Zagreb-Belgrade expressway, along with _everything_ they had. Some trucks and tractor trailers were so loaded that it seemed as if these people almost took out the plumming out of their houses and brought that along with them. Sure, "ethnically cleansed", but exactly how clear cut is the issue?

And there's more. A lot of the people from the part of Krajina liberated by "Storm" relocated not just to Serbia but to eastern Slavonia, near Vukovar, where many of them continued to live even after the peaceful reintegration in 1998. And a number of those also returned to their old homes in ex-Krajina -- according to my reading of the 2001 census, there's over 50,000 Serbs in those counties now. Certainly not a lot, but still a considerable number undoing the purported massive ethnic cleansing. And more keep returning each year. Except for those that see no future in an economically depressed hinterland (hint, hint).

Overall, the current situation is certainly a result of Croatian army winning the war in Croatia. Some of those areas can certainly be described as "ethnically cleansed" and it's safe to say that the policy of right-wing extremists and criminals like Tomislav Merčep in Croatia was ethnic cleansing. However, Croatia in general has not been proven guilty on the charge and Croatia of today is making a big effort to undo the past wrongdoings and it's entirely unfair to paint the whole country as fascist. --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The ICTY is a non-issue because to this day it has not convicted any big fish concering the Croat ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina as the big fish died, Tudjman the president in 1999, Gojko Susak, the defense minister in 1998.

They would have probably been indicted had they stayed alive. But you seem to question the overall bias of the court, not unlike Slobodan Milosevic... --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I really do not see how anyone can claim that the regime of Croatia was under the influence of Slobodan Milosevic?

I didn't say under the influence, I said they plotted the thing together. You know, they were in cahoots. In collusion. They agreed on a secret plot. How much more clear can I get? --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No, there were no population shifts, the HRW report goes to show it as most of the displaced Krajina Serbs were not resettled but rather live in refugee camps. Many fled abroad but some 250,000 still await the right to return to their homes. A population exchange would mean that these people would have moved into homes of a population that was leaving Serbia and there was no such population otherwise the Krajina Serbs would not be seeking the right of return.

You just invented this "population exchange" story. It's somewhat amusing, but you also need to restrain your imagination. --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

As this map from UNHCR depicts, the number of refugees from Serbia-Montenegro (FRY) in Croatia was numbered at 859, the number of refugees in FRY (Serbia-Montenegro) from Croatia at 244,000. Although this has nothing to do with the demographics of Croatia it just goes to show why Shallot's ethnically-motivated editing is wrong when speaking in terms of facts.

http://www.reliefweb.int/w/fullMaps_Eu.nsf/luFullMap/492ABC03F708AEC785256BB3004F39B3/$File/unhcr_balkans0402.pdf?OpenElement

I sincerely hope that Mr. Shallot will come to realize that the truth does not care for politics or nationalities, I am not going to involve your ethnic origin in this discussion because it has nothing to do with the big picture, I do not care what the reasons for you being misled are, I just hope that you will come to grips with the facts.

No, it just goes to show that you're not interested in looking at the big picture and would rather stick to the radical party-line. I am not afraid to say that I am of Croat heritage, and that's because I am ashamed of my compatriots' wrongdoings and proud of the good things my compatriots have done -- I can very well delineate the two. I don't live in a delusion that everyhing related to my ethnicity is godsend and everything of another ethnicity is demonic, but I do see that some others are trying to sell that kind of nonsense and I protest against it. --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I hope that the link to the HRW page will be restored, but I certainly won't have a tantrum on this discussion page in the event that this does not happen. I just hope that this Wikipedia page will stay as faithful to the facts as possible.

Sincerely

--Igor 0:34, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Languages

About the small issue of languages that got sidestepped: reverting "Croatian 96%" to "Croatian/Serbian 96%" is just plain old spiteful, because the 2001 census data available publically at http://www.dzs.hr/Eng/Census/Popis/E01_02_03/E01_02_03.html pretty clearly states:

• 96,12% Croatian,
• 1,01% Serbian,
• 0,11% Serbo-Croatian and
• 0,05% Croato-Serbian.

The fine-grained options made sure that there was no biased generalization of what the people said, so I don't see any reason to modify it on Wikipedia. --Shallot 15:14, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

More on the edit war

Moved from Wikipedia:Protected page, in response to User:RickK 's protection notice reading " User: Igor keeps putting his own POV into this article."

• RickK got into the middle of an edit war and took a side which is preventing me from adding a related URL and NPOV text. The number of Serbs in Croatia has dropped due to what is known as ethnic cleansing, the figures state it, some might want to deny it but fact is that there were some 600 thousand in 1991 and only 200 thousand in 2001. But seeing how RickK accuses me of inputting my own POV perhaps he should get in on the discussion Talk:Demographics_of_Croatia PS, When asked to explain his/her behaviour, RickK locked his own Talk page: User_talk:RickK -- User:Igor 1:31, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • Nonsense. My Talk page was protected from a previous vandal's continued messing with the page. It has nothing to do with this dispute. Now, please point to ONE thing that I did on the page that would indicate that I engaged in an edit war with you. All I did was to revert your POV changes to a previous version. That's not an edit war. You taking direction from USer:Jiang? RickK 02:41, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • Be advised that calling Igor's changes "POV" as opposed to "vandalism" constitutes taking a side in an edit war. The warring sides in an edit war usually call the other side "POV"... --Jiang 03:30, 7 Sep 2003 TC)
    • Funny you should talk about direction-taking, it would rather seem to me as if it were you taking direction from Shallot whose input you put in instead of mine. And by the way, if you had been following the Page history you would have noticed that I was simply restoring the original version whose changing Shallot tried to camouflage in a general reorganization. I did not mind his reorganizing paragraphs but I did mind his POV.--Igor 01:21, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Edit war resolution

Shallot, is there any reason not to keep the Human Rights Watch link?

But I never said there was any reason against it! I went back and checked the history, thinking perhaps I removed it with Igor's other stuff by mistake, but fact is that I never that. My complaint was against the assumptive nature of the comments added in the page, certainly not against any HRW report. That link is just fine by me, like the link to the ICTY data or UNHCR data or anything similar. --Shallot 16:44, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Igor, the idea behind NPOV is to attribute views to their adherents. Your perspective can be included if it is attributed, but since there is a controversy about what the facts are, the different viewpoints should be given equal weight.—Eloquence 02:42, Sep 11, 2003 (UTC)

You would think that he'd listen... I'm really bored now. --Shallot 00:16, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Let Igor do what he wants with the page, I have no intention of dealing with edit wars any more. RickK 05:05, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So, can someone propose appropriate replacement wording for the ethnic cleansing issue? --Shallot 15:52, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Lacking further comments, I went ahead and dropped the biased text in favor of links that provide decent explanations of historic events. --Shallot 14:42, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Latest "ethnic cleansing"

Again, Igor is trying to portray all actions, military or not, of the Croatian government as ethnic cleansing. It's particularly funny that "basically anyone who fought in the war" would be on war criminals list when there was full amnesty for soldiers granted something over five years ago. This argument is becoming so painfully pointless. --Shallot 13:51, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The Croatian government denies any ethnic cleansing on a large scale as is claimed by some of the Serbs, although it is unclear what else Operation Storm, which caused 200,000 Serbs to leave the country just a peace deal was agreed, could be termed as.

I've (again) removed this argument and the accompanying change of tone because it's not even remotely proven to be correct. Further details can be found in Operation Storm, which explains why all this ranting is unwarranted... --Joy [shallot] 12:18, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

new map

This map, while obviously made in good faith (to replace the copyrighted old one), is even worse and less accurate and more misleading than the previous one! I really need to put my foot down on this kind of crap now. User:Comrade009 also replicated at the top of the ethnic cleansing... what propaganda can do... :( --Joy [shallot] 17:50, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My bad. The former map was put up on requests for recreation. The only thing I knew was that there was a potential copyright violation; I didn't know about this whole edit war dealy. In fact, I didn't even know which articles contained the image (I finally found out where to check). As for accuracy, I tried my best to recreate it in good faith. I promise to be more careful in the future. This isn't an issue of propaganda or belief, it's an issue of me not knowing any better. In fact, I didn't know anything about the issue in general, let a lone the map. Once again, sorry. --Comrade009 01:01, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I understood it like that from the start, it's not your fault. The problems with map accuracy are not related to the process of redrawing but to the original information. --Joy [shallot] 15:24, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. Is the map inaccurate? What would an accurate map look like? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 15:19, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is inaccurate, and also quite biased in the way it takes the snapshot: to paint the whole picture, it would need a 1991 version, a 1993 version and a 2005 version, too; also, it would need to apply the same level of detail to both left and the right map. We have had another map like this posted, at Image:Krajina ethnic map.jpg, and the comments on that one are much more exact, cf. Talk:Republic of Serbian Krajina#Ethnic_map. --Joy [shallot] 15:24, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, given adequate source material, I would be more than glad to recreate another map. Since I have the template of croatia it wouldn't take too long. --Comrade009 04:17, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)