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→Sources now suggest parallel massacres: summary of present state of en.Wikipedia articles on the Tigray conflict massacres |
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== Sources now suggest parallel massacres == |
== Sources now suggest parallel massacres == |
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This is just a reminder that this en.Wikipedia article cannot get closer to the truth than the [[WP:RS|reliable sources]]. The sources we have do ''not'' directly contradict each other. If all the witnesses have spoken truthfully and been accurately quoted/summarised by Amnesty, EHRC, Reuters, and the FT, then there have been successive, or partly simultaneous, massacres in Mai Kadra by Samri and the Amhara militias. (Sounds like the UN Security Council will need to get the [[International Criminal Court]] (ICC) to investigate, given that Ethiopia is [[States parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court#Non-party, non-signatory states|not party to the Rome Statute]] of the ICC.) [[User:Boud|Boud]] ([[User talk:Boud|talk]]) 17:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC) |
This is just a reminder that this en.Wikipedia article cannot get closer to the truth than the [[WP:RS|reliable sources]]. The sources we have do ''not'' directly contradict each other. If all the witnesses have spoken truthfully and been accurately quoted/summarised by Amnesty, EHRC, Reuters, and the FT, then there have been successive, or partly simultaneous, massacres in Mai Kadra by Samri and the Amhara militias. (Sounds like the UN Security Council will need to get the [[International Criminal Court]] (ICC) to investigate, given that Ethiopia is [[States parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court#Non-party, non-signatory states|not party to the Rome Statute]] of the ICC.) [[User:Boud|Boud]] ([[User talk:Boud|talk]]) 17:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC) |
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I started the article [[Humera massacre]], since the number of sources seems strong enough. |
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For anyone thinking of an overview article, the sources we have now point to: |
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* [[Humera Airport]] massacre - 70 victims - date could be sometime before 10 November when the ENDF arrived; or could be by the ENDF/Amharans after they arrived and before 29 November when the ''one'' source (Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, repeated in multiple media) reported it, attributed to TPLF by anonymous military person; |
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* [[Mai Kadra massacre]] - 700 or more victims - 9-10 November - Amnesty + EHRC say by Samri (Tigrayans) against Amharans; two refugees say by Amharans against Tigrayans; |
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* [[Humera massacre]] - 20 or more Tigrayan victims - has to be sometime before/on or around 12 November, the day when the ENDF officially took over Humera; three Western mainstream media sources interviewing refugees; |
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* ethnic murders taking place "on the road" - dates, locations unknown, interviews with refugess in Western mainstream media. |
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I don't see any point creating [[Humera Airport massacre]] with only one source that has very little information (one human body per grave? forensic analysis to estimate dates of deaths? independent human rights investigation team/prosecutors' team invited to investigate?). |
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A probably uncontroversial title for an ''overview'' article could be [[Human rights violations during the Tigray conflict]]. This could have more details of the cases at unidentified locations and dates. |
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[[User:Boud|Boud]] ([[User talk:Boud|talk]]) 00:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC) |
Revision as of 00:36, 10 December 2020
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Contested deletion
This article should not be speedy deleted as lacking sufficient context to identify its subject, because it is under construction and I am adding detail as we speak.--Varavour (talk) 21:55, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Premature assignment of blame
On reading the ingress, I was led to understand that the TPLF committed the atrocity, but reading further, I understood that this claim is disputed and that government forces have also been blamed. As a casual reader who knows nothing of this conflict, reading that ingress in an instant seemed to color the parties of the conflict very starkly in a way that on further reading, seems dubious. The ingress ought to be edited to reflect how unclear the information regarding this event still is.
Sincerely, Sanna A, Sweden 159.242.234.119 (talk) 21:07, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
- Just because one party denied it doesn’t mean that they didn’t do it. There is enough evidence showing that they did do it for inclusion. FlalfTalk 22:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
- Unless I've misread them, the Thomson Reuters and Telegraph reports at most only have one witness with a discordant report for "Moya Khadra"; one case is for an unnamed town; some are for Humera. A separate article could be broken off for Humera massacre if the reports are serious enough. Boud (talk) 00:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- I concur with the concerns of Sanna A. The ingress until minutes ago was misleading in the context of the full article. This article covers a highly-controversial event related to an ongoing conflict; as such, editors should be vigilant about maintaining objectivity and clarity regarding assertions made and the nature of their sources.108.48.44.199 (talk) 02:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Most of the victims per Amnesty and EHRC; and Thomson Reuters
In the Amnesty International report I see:
the Amhara regional government’s media agency AMMA reported there were around 500 victims, adding that they were primarily non-Tigrayan residents of the town.
- immediate sentence following:
A man who is helping to clear the bodies from the streets told Amnesty International that he had looked at the state-issued identification cards of some victims, and most were Amhara.
EHRC preliminary report to media after a 6-day mission:
hundreds of people they identified as ethnic “Amharas and Wolkait origin”,
So either "mostly Amharans" or "non-Tigrayans" seems to match the two sources.
The Thomson Reuters report has one witness interviewed by a journalist who said that Tigrayans were the victims: Barhat, 52, said she fled from Moya Khadra after people from the Amhara region, which borders Tigray and whose rulers back Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, attacked them. "They killed anyone who said they were Tigrayan."
Based on the depth of information in the various reports, I think that the Thomson Reuters refugee interviewee only counts as an "alternative" point of view, and does not override the Amnesty and EHRC reports concerning "most" of the victims, given the present sources that we have.
Boud (talk) 22:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- The EHRC preliminary report posted on GAFAMdocs (the EHRC presumably does not know that it should manage its own webpage independently) gives a lot more depth than the newspaper report. Boud (talk) 22:51, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- I would note that every indication suggests that the events described in the Reuters report and the Telegraph are also claimed to have taken place in Mai Kadra as opposed to another towns. In particular, the reference to a "town near Humera" should be clearly taken to mean Mai Kadra. Hence, the separation between events in Mai Kadra and "events in the region" would appear to be fallacious. I will add some things from reports from CNN and AFP which provide independent verification. As for the website I would not be so hard on the EHRC; they are grossly underfunded and hosting a reliable website in Ethiopia is a real pain. --Varavour (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
- If you think the separation between Mai Kadra and Humera is misleading, then giving specific quotes here would probably be useful, especially given what has been verging on edit wars here, especially by IPs. I'm not saying that you shouldn't edit the article, but details here may help shortcut edit wars, and especially help editors aiming at NPOV (hopefully most, though a few need some time to learn). If federal forces went on a "vengeance" rampage on the way to and in Humera, then that info will hopefully be collected and published.
- On the EHRC and a website: it's not a question of funding and hosting a website necessarily locally; it's a question of knowledge: there are plenty of independent, well-reputed alternatives to GAFAM available, which would certainly be better than googledocs. Boud (talk) 00:46, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
- I would note that every indication suggests that the events described in the Reuters report and the Telegraph are also claimed to have taken place in Mai Kadra as opposed to another towns. In particular, the reference to a "town near Humera" should be clearly taken to mean Mai Kadra. Hence, the separation between events in Mai Kadra and "events in the region" would appear to be fallacious. I will add some things from reports from CNN and AFP which provide independent verification. As for the website I would not be so hard on the EHRC; they are grossly underfunded and hosting a reliable website in Ethiopia is a real pain. --Varavour (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
- Please note that the Amnesty International article states that the perpetrators could not be independently verified. They are citing Amhara Government Media Agency and phone calls with people accompanied government forces, whilst the Tigrayan media and refugees say the exact opposite[1]. Contact with the Tigray region is completely cut off, and the Ethiopian Government has refused to allow independent investigations. [2] They have only allowed the Government headed EHRC to investigate so government backed reports should be taken with caution as they are unlikely to implicate the government themselves. A.y.187 (talk) 13:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- @A.y.187: I see nothing in the Amnesty report about telephone calls. It's true that face-to-face interviews are more reliable than online (or only audio, e.g. telephone) interviews, but this is not a major argument against the reliability of the investigation. More importantly, the Amnesty report does not say that it is only citing Amhara Government Media Agency; it quite clearly talks about several interviews and gives a fair amount of details of its investigation. There are no particular reasons to expect Amnesty to be biased to one side or another here.
- The FT article is new and reports info from a second refugee, that's significant.
- Another point which is significant in the Amnesty report is the witnesses who were available for interviews:
witnesses, who were providing food and other supplies to the Ethiopian Defense Forces (EDF)
. People who were attacked by the ENDF (= EDF) or ENDF-associated forces (Amhara militias) would probably be afraid to provide food to the ENDF; they would be more likely to be in hiding or have fled to Sudan. - The degree of independence of the EHRC from the government is an important point - please help develop the article Ethiopian Human Rights Commission - currently it says that a critic of the EHRC, Bekele, was appointed director in Feb 2019, so it appears that the EHRC is not as dependent on the federal government as it used to be. But the more sourced information we have, the better. Boud (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
References
- ^ "Refugees flee Ethiopia's brutal war with tales of atrocities on both sides". financial times. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
- ^ "Ethiopia rejects independent probes into Tigray conflict".
Sources now suggest parallel massacres
This is just a reminder that this en.Wikipedia article cannot get closer to the truth than the reliable sources. The sources we have do not directly contradict each other. If all the witnesses have spoken truthfully and been accurately quoted/summarised by Amnesty, EHRC, Reuters, and the FT, then there have been successive, or partly simultaneous, massacres in Mai Kadra by Samri and the Amhara militias. (Sounds like the UN Security Council will need to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, given that Ethiopia is not party to the Rome Statute of the ICC.) Boud (talk) 17:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
I started the article Humera massacre, since the number of sources seems strong enough.
For anyone thinking of an overview article, the sources we have now point to:
- Humera Airport massacre - 70 victims - date could be sometime before 10 November when the ENDF arrived; or could be by the ENDF/Amharans after they arrived and before 29 November when the one source (Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, repeated in multiple media) reported it, attributed to TPLF by anonymous military person;
- Mai Kadra massacre - 700 or more victims - 9-10 November - Amnesty + EHRC say by Samri (Tigrayans) against Amharans; two refugees say by Amharans against Tigrayans;
- Humera massacre - 20 or more Tigrayan victims - has to be sometime before/on or around 12 November, the day when the ENDF officially took over Humera; three Western mainstream media sources interviewing refugees;
- ethnic murders taking place "on the road" - dates, locations unknown, interviews with refugess in Western mainstream media.
I don't see any point creating Humera Airport massacre with only one source that has very little information (one human body per grave? forensic analysis to estimate dates of deaths? independent human rights investigation team/prosecutors' team invited to investigate?). A probably uncontroversial title for an overview article could be Human rights violations during the Tigray conflict. This could have more details of the cases at unidentified locations and dates. Boud (talk) 00:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC)