Talk:Igor Girkin/Archive 1

Archive 1

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 22 July 2023

In the first paragraph for this chapter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin#Dismissal_as_Donetsk_People's_Republic_minister

The name "Sergei Kavtaradze" should not be linked to any page. The page it is currently linked to is for a completely different person who died decades before these events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kavtaradze Smike05 (talk) 05:26, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

 Done, thank you. — kashmīrī ^TALK 06:53, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Arrest: source

Hi there,

the source listed for Girkin's arrest does not address the topic. TASS has made a press release about the arrest, though: https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/18331337

Since I lack extended-confirmed edit privileges, I'd like to ask someone to replace the source. Mirrortemplar (talk) 11:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

 Done by another editor. Sourcing seems good now. — kashmīrī ^TALK 07:07, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Category:War criminals

Category:War criminals was added by @Ymblanter on November 18, 2022, nine months ago.[1]

It was removed by @Kashmiri twice, recently,[2][3] with “not convicted of war crimes” and invoking BLP.

I would argue that it is a stable part of this article as well, and should be subject to WP:BRD, and there is no reason to tie it to the start of an edit war over Category:Mass murderers, so I am starting this separate discussion.  —Michael Z. 19:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPCRIME explicitly prohibits such a label since the subject has not been convicted of a war crime. This is unrelated to BRD and any considerations of stable version, etc. — kashmīrī ^TALK 19:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe that the Dutch court did find that Girkin did not have combatant immunity, and therefore his mass murder conviction does not make him legally a war criminal.

But he did admit to committing war crimes in Chechnia, and is called a war criminal for it in sources. I suppose we’ll have to dig them up and see if they warrant the category.

I don’t know about his crimes in Bosnia or Crimea.  —Michael Z. 19:59, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m addition to what Mzajac says, the BLPCRIME guideline in this case applies to non public figures. Girkin is a public figure. Volunteer Marek 02:10, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

All Ukranian and pro-Ukranian sources are referring to him as war criminal and terrorist, but they are heavily biased. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:31, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

You can’t dismiss sources because you think they’re biased and the definition here is almost circular: what makes a source “pro-Ukrainian”? Why, obviously the fact that they call him a war criminal! Volunteer Marek 02:10, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

We can dissmiss them cause warring parties tend to lie on each other. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

No. We don't get to make that call and say which source is lying or not (you could use that excuse to remove almost anything!). We go by whether sources are reliable or not. Volunteer Marek 14:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Pretty much every leader whose country is engaged in an armed conflict has been called a war criminal by the other side. War crimes are, unfortunately, part of most armed conflicts and are always exploited by the propaganda of the warring parties. We're a global encyclopaedia, though, not an advocacy/propaganda platform, and so we need to weigh our language more carefully; particularly with regard to living persons. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:57, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

We need to follow reliable sources is what we need to do. Volunteer Marek 02:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Disagree. We need to follow the policies. WP:INDISCRIMINATE is one of them. — kashmīrī ^TALK 12:32, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

VM: "We need to follow reliable sources". Kashmiri: "Disagree. We need to follow the policies". Following reliable sources IS the policy. I see no relevance of WP:INDISCRIMINATE here - this is NOT "indiscriminate collection of information". This is a key fact about this subject. Volunteer Marek 14:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Comment @Ymblanter It might be helpful to the discussion if you could state your original rationale for adding the category. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 08:18, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I am pretty sure I added it following the Dutch court decision, and at the time it seemed obvious to me (I must have seen a couple of English/ Dutch sources calling him a war criminal, but I have no records, and the sources might have been premature). I did not mean his activity in Chechnya or elsewhere. Ymblanter (talk) 11:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, however the Dutch did not charge the subject with war crimes at all. His charges were only common crimes based on the Dutch penal code (it was, roughly, murder/manslaughter and being accessory to it). — kashmīrī ^TALK 12:04, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

To be precise, he is convicted for co-perpetration of 298 counts of murder - not manslaugther/accessory - and co-perpetration of intentionally and unlawfully causing an aircraft to crash, see [4]] Difool (talk) 14:48, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Here[5] is an excellent explanation of the term "co-perpetration" and other modes of criminal perpetration under the Dutch law (scroll down to Modes of Participation). They have no good equivalent in Common Law, however they differ significantly from being the perpetrator which the English term murderer entails. — kashmīrī ^TALK 10:41, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

As your source says, in Dutch law co-perpetrators are considered as equally responsible for the crime as the perpetrators, and co-perpetrators face the same sentence as the perpetrators.

You could compare it to the September 11 hijackers, Ahmed al-Ghamdi is labeled as Category:Saudi Arabian mass murderers even though he didn't fly the plane. Same for Osama bin Laden (I assume the category is for the September 11 attacks). Difool (talk) 15:33, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Those comparisons are entirely inaccurate. Al-Ghamdi led the actual hijacking. Bin Laden conceived and planned the whole idea.

In contrast, nobody is claiming that Girkin personally premeditated the murder of 298 innocent civilians; the court strung together a long chain of tenuous steps to find him to have been a co-perpetrator of moord (I use the original term because the Anglo-American use of the term “murder” is defined in a specific way), invoking the doctrine of transferred intent (implicitly assuming that the act of shooting down a Ukrainian military cargo plane would have been ordinary murder and within Dutch jurisdiction). Specifically, Girkin was considered guilty because he was found to have been aware as a commander that the TELAR was being deployed into the separatist-controlled territory.

In my view, making Wikivoice statements on the basis of the Dutch verdict is seriously problematic, because, among other reasons to hold back, customary international law views the proceeding to be a nullity of nullities (as I outlined previously in other replies).

But even if one accepts the court ruling completely, it doesn’t matter because the act or omission he was found to have done is not, neither commonly nor in Anglophone legal systems, called mass murder.

Anyway, that should suffice to answer the “mass murderer” arguments.

But as for “war criminal”, there is no real basis and these sorts of additions always need to be considered very seriously before adding, especially in a BLP. “At the time it seemed obvious to me” is hardly a good enough reason if strong support can’t be found after the fact. For a legendary Wikipedian to make such a careless oversight would be the intended purpose of WP:TROUT if it had come up outside the context of a talk page discussion.

The bandying about of the term “convicted war criminal” by journalistic sources and at least one partisan think tank has no basis in facts. He was not tried for war crimes, probably since there was no known evidence of any conspiracy to intentionally shoot down a civilian airliner.

Adding a category is no different than making a characterization in the lead. It’s really that simple. Calling a living person a war criminal in the absence of any conviction for that is just an egregious violation of multiple WP policies.

Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 14:59, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Hats off for an excellent explanation, @RadioactiveBoulevardier. Regarding the potential war crime charge, one other consideration is that apparently such a charge can't be tried in absentia and so it was not even considered by the Dutch prosecutors. That said, should it be proven in a court that the shootdown was a blatant violation of the 4th Geneva Convention (which I strongly believe it was) and that Girkin had co-perpetrated it, I'd be more than happy to re-add the "war criminal" category myself. For now, feel free to remove it per this response. — kashmīrī ^TALK 15:24, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I was literally writing out a detailed revert summary in another tab when I got the notification for this mention :) RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 15:28, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Those comparisons are entirely inaccurate. Al-Ghamdi led the actual hijacking. Bin Laden conceived and planned the whole idea.

You and Kashmīrī argued that the Dutch conviction of Girkin of 298 counts of murder would not be defined as "murder", because he was not the perpetrator of the killing. I tried to use Al-Ghamdi and Bin Laden as examples of people categorized as mass murderer, but who were not the perpetrators of the killing.

You two argue that for "murder" - in the Category:Mass murderers description - a very strict definition needs to be used, but inconsistently that for "state" a very loose definition can be used.

My POV is:

• Girkin is convicted by a Dutch court of Girkin of 298 counts of murder. To not accept the conviction of the Dutch court, you have to provide a reliable source.
• Multiple sources call him 'convicted of mass murder': CNN, The Irish Times, BBC - BBC calls the act also a war crime, BTW.
• The "state" in the Category:Mass murderers description should be used to make distinction between people that have combatant immunity, war criminals, and those who have not, mass murderers. The Dutch court explicitly says that the DPR was not a State, and that Girkin can't invoke combatant immunity because he was not in service of the official armed forces of Russia.

With this we can categorize Girkin in the Category:Mass murderers. Difool (talk) 03:33, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

As always this comes down to sources. What are the sources that refer to him in such terms? Volunteer Marek 04:44, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, the only thing we can say per WP:BLP over there is that he was accused. He wasn't convicted yet. That's it. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:27, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Even if he wasn’t convicted, if sources call him a war criminal, so do we. Volunteer Marek 02:07, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Well I have to disagree cause WP:NEWS wouldn't be reliable for that statement, even though WP:RSCONTEXT would allow us. Stating that Ukranian-specific sources are always referring to him as such just to make this fact explicit would be fine. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:04, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The page you link, WP:NEWS is a page which describes "Various sources of news about Wikipedia". I have no idea what the relevance of that is suppose to be. Perhaps you meant WP:NEWSORG? Volunteer Marek 14:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek Sorry, but Wikipedia is not a dumb collection of press quotes. This is an encyclopaedia, and its all articles are expected to have a (crowdsourced) editorial oversight. All editors are expected to abide by WP:BLPCRIME, for instance. The existence of a press article that goes against our policies is no justification for the editors to breach them. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:49, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

That is incorrect. A "press article" cannot "go against our policies". Only editors or Wikipedia articles can "go against our policies". A press article is either a reliable source or it isn't and if it is then we can use it. WP:BLPCRIME applies to non-public persons which doesn't apply to Girkin. If reliable sources call him a war criminal so do we. If reliable sources call him a mass murderer so do we. The fact that he's actually been convicted of the latter is just icing on the cake. Volunteer Marek 14:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek Incorrect. BLPCRIME applies to all biographies of living people. For non-public figures, editors are urged not to include material even suggesting that the person has committed a crime.

A press article of course can be aligned with our policies (e.g., re. wording, sourcing, NPOV, etc.) or not aligned. If it's not aligned (takes fringe positions for instance), we should not blindly copy its wording without attribution. Yes, we as editors are required to evaluate sources prior to using them.

Even though, Category:Mass murderers is not to be used for those who carried out massacres in service of a state. As you can read in this very article, the shootdown was not a private killing by a Mr Girkin – it was a military order issued by a Defence Minister of a quasi-state acting in his official capacity. — kashmīrī ^TALK 15:09, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect. For individuals who are not public figures—that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures. Nobody’s suggesting using non reliable sources. What’s being suggested is using RELIABLE sources and following our WP:RS policy.

It would help the discussion if we could have a list of the sources that refer to him as war criminal or murderer. Volunteer Marek 15:40, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The original idea of that line [6] was of course to put mass killers in either Category:Mass murderers or Category:War criminals. Difool (talk) 16:13, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

As an aside, while the Cat Mass Murderers apparently is not supposed to be used for state actors, one of its sub cats is [7] is basically almost ALL state actors. Sheesh. Typical. Volunteer Marek 15:47, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, they are mutually exclusive. The original cat creator perhaps thought of genocide as a subset of mass murder, but this is incorrect – (mass) murder is a common crime prosecuted under national laws, while genocide is usually prosecuted by international tribunals established on the basis of the UN Genocide Convention. — kashmīrī ^TALK 17:19, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Genocide usually includes mass murder, and is commonly considered to be targeted mass murder, although legally it is not defined that way. But on another level, of course, the very concept of geno-cide means murder of a nation which comprises a mass of people. The category hierarchy is not wrong.  —Michael Z. 20:33, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

genocide... is commonly considered to be targeted mass murder. You're making it up, sorry.

Genocide does often comprise mass killings, but legally it has nothing to do with the legal qualification of the crime of murder (which is defined and prosecuted under national legislation). — kashmīrī ^TALK 20:39, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

You know you don’t always have to be right, especially when it has little bearing on the topic at had. Killing innocent people is murder. Collins Cobuild defines genocide as murder.[8] Other dictionaries define it as intentional, deliberate, or systematic killing, which is murder.[9][10][11] Thesauruses give murder or mass murder as synonyms for genocide.[12]

If you want to be right, please show reliable sources saying genocide is not murder, or that it has ever been committed without murder.  —Michael Z. 19:17, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

For you to understand, you'd need to have a basic understanding of law, which you evidently don't have if you believe that killing innocent people is murder. Ever heard of traffic accidents? Why should the victim's innocence matter?

See, I could try to explain it to you, but I'm afraid it would be a complete waste of time. Let me only say that murder is a concept of criminal law. When the court is to decide whether a given act was a murder, it will look into the criminal code. The court may rule that the homicide did not constitute murder but, for instance, manslaughter or even it was an accidental death.

Genocide is only loosely related to killing. The modern definition of genocide encompasses not just physical elimination of a nation but also other methods that may lead to the extinction, like mass sterilisation or mass deportation of children. For a good overview in simple English, one that I hope you will comprehend, see here: [13].

Remember: genocides can be complex, and genocide ≠ mass killings.

When deciding whether a given act was genocide, the court (an international tribunal, usually) will not be interested in any country's criminal code or other national laws but will focus on the 1948 Genocide Convention. The tribunal will not rule about murder, manslaughter, accidental deaths, etc. It will instead focus on checking whether the act has fulfilled the Convention criteria. This is what the Convention is for.

Now, the article subject has not been charged with genocide. He has not been charged with war crimes (unfortunately!). He has only been charged with (and convicted of) violating Dutch national legislation.

I very much hope this clarifies the matter to you. — kashmīrī ^TALK 02:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Oppose moving the article from Category:Russian mass murderers to Category:Russian violators of Dutch national legislation.  —Michael Z. 01:38, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, explaining legal nuances to you was a complete waste of time, just as expected. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:14, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I support Girkin's inclusion in Category:Mass murderers mainly per @Difool argumentation and citation of sources. While @Kashmiri and @Alexander Davronov's arguments are interesting at times, they have not presented reliable sources to support their claims. Marcelus (talk) 06:10, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

• The subject has been convicted in the Netherlands for the murder of 298 people. That crime qualify as a mass murder and a war crime. If he is not a mass murderer and war criminal, then I do not know who is. And he is described as such in a number of sources. My very best wishes (talk)

Mass-murderer

This is a continuation of a discussion at #Category:Mass murderers, above. —Michael Z. 19:40, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

17, 2023, 20:46 - «Undid revision 1170844837 by Kashmiri talk) reverting to stable version until there is consensus to change»
17, 2023, 15:28 - «Undid revision 1170842087 by Mzajac talk) Read WP:BRD and WP:BLP»
17, 2023, 15:10 - «Undid revision 1170840684 by Kashmiri talk) discussion in progress: please show consensus instead of unilaterally changing»
17, 2023, 15:02 - «removed Category:Russian mass murderers using HotCat See Talk»

@Mzajac and Kashmiri: It's correct to call the subject a Mass-murderer. Cause at least not directly but he is responsible for massive deaths. Just like putin.

AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 13:23, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Being indirectly responsible for (i.e., contributing to) mass deaths is not the same as being a "mass murderer", sorry. Otherwise you'd need to use this term for pretty much every US or Russian president and many generals. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

If anything, Girkin should have been charged with a war crime, as he was in the military chain of command at the time and his order was a war crime, pure and simple. However, such a charge would not stand in a Dutch court due to jurisdiction issues. Hence this very problematic charge of murder. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:44, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate you pushing back on these claims - but do you think there's material in Igor Girkin#Chechen Wars to justify the claim for him being a mass murderer? --Svennik (talk) 14:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Our article suggests that it's uncertain that Girkin at all took part in Chechen wars – the entire "Chechen Wars" subsection is mostly speculation based on anonymous blogs and websites that no longer exist. It would be an extremely weak base for such a claim related to a living person. — kashmīrī ^TALK 14:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

So Kashmiri’s now arguing that Girkin cannot be categorized as a mass murderer because he should have been charged with war crimes, but he’s not a war criminal because he’s not charged with war crimes. Do I have this right?

Well, it’s an unfounded opinion. The subject was charged and convicted, declined the right to defend himself, and declined any right to appeal. He’s legally guilty of murder was of 298 people, which meets Wikipedia’s definition for Category:mass murderers, “defined as killing at least four people at the same time or over a relatively short period of time.”  —Michael Z. 19:52, 22 August 2023 (UTC)