Talk:List of genocides

Before writing a comment please read the comments below, and add yours in the most relevant section, or add a new section if nothing similar exists.

Inclusion of Gaza genocide

In the interest of avoiding further edit warring, I'm starting a section to discuss the Gaza genocide inclusion and the list inclusion criteria more generally.

I don't think we can verify many of the list entries as being the majority view in relevant scholarship. Usually we cite a couple sources that call the event a genocide. So, I support inclusion of any genocide described as such in a significant body of scholarship, with a disclaimer at the top of the list indicating that this list doesn't represent Wikipedia's viewpoint and a note of relevant disagreement with every disputed entry. (t · c) buidhe 19:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

In this case we should change the article name to present this change in criteria. Vegan416 (talk) 20:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

buidhe's suggestion is no different from the criteria that is currently detailed in the article lede, so a change of name is not necessary. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

we did that a few months ago—blindlynx 22:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

As per the discussion in April, it was agreed to change the criteria from the previous criteria where it was scholarship + "in line with the UN convention", to "significant scholarship" (this can be by prominence or by multitude), as most Genocide Scholars and related specialists use frameworks different to the UN convention. So in trying to apply the previous standard editors would have to make that determination which it was thought bordered to close to OR. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Buidhe's suggestion seems very reasonable to me: articles like this one should reflect significant body of scholarship. Of course we shouldn't require unanimity – there will always be sources close to or sympathethic to the perpetrators, while decisions by international tribunals unfortunately have also a political dimension and may or may not reflect the facts on the ground. Impartial scholarship appears the best way to go here. No disclaimer is necessary – there's no "Wikipedia point of view", and anyway every Wikipedia page already contains a link to Wikipedia:General disclaimer. — kashmīrī ^TALK 02:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

According to the definition of genocide on this very same page what is happening is Gaza is NOT genocide.

The definition on this page says "any of the following acts committed with INTENT TO DESTROY, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group..."

What is occuring in Gaza simply does not meet that definition. Israel is attempting to stop Hamas (a terrorist organization) from attacking them. The death of many Palestinians, while certainly tragic, is not the intent of the attacks. If there is anything close to genocide going on it is the attempted genocide of the Israeli people by Hamas since it is the intent of Hamas to wipe out all Jews. Jimv1983 (talk) 10:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

This is a list of events which have been classified as genocide by significant scholarship. Please read the rest of that section which makes it clear the UN definition is not always used is and is presented in the list as an example of a definition of genocide not the only definition of it—blindlynx 15:29, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm confused. I don't see any reference in this case to any significant scholarship. The only reference to any scholarship is the Time article, in which the referenced scholarship is (a) not significant and (b) not unequivocal. Moreover, this section of the article cites so little scholarship that it actually violates the basic Wikipedia standard of no original research. Based on these criteria, Gaza does not presently qualify. In contrast, it's rather shocking that Oct 7, 2023 is not listed, which is about as textbook a case of genocide as they come - the perpetrators themselves publicly declared their genocidal intent and indeed there is a separate Wikipedia article on it. Why is the latter not included here? ~~ Narc (talk) 06:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, keep it on here that is the way the consensus is going now, and you can see plenty of other massacres and events that are only considered as such by a few sourcesa as you say there. Ecpiandy (talk) 21:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

How are you gauging "consensus"? It looks to me like anything but. Narc (talk) 19:26, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

By including it, we're saying that it is a genocide. This is going beyond what we can reasonably do based on the current sourcing. For example, we exclude the Ukraine genocide. We need to wait until the ICJ ruling for both of these. BilledMammal (talk) 00:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's what we're saying necessarily. The standard I think, which is what it is written at the top of the list, is acceptance in some "significant scholarship". See for example the Holodomor: the majority scholarly position is probably that it is not a genocide, but we include it because there is legitimate scholarly debate. I think if we include the Holodomor we should include the Gaza genocide. Though there is also a reasonable argument to include neither. Endwise (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

There are several items on the list that probably don't belong here, but given these events are happening now it's more important that we get this one right. BilledMammal (talk) 01:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The idea that including the Gaza Genocide means Wikipedia is saying it is a genocide is complete nonsense. Wikipedia does not make determinations of fact. It merely reports what authoritative sources say, and there are many authoritative sources saying what's happening in Gaza is a genocide. Ianbrettcooper (talk) 11:12, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Confused. I don't see any significant scholarship cited here. The only reference to any scholarship is the Time article, in which the referenced scholarship is (a) not significant and (b) not unequivocal. Moreover, this section of the article cites so little scholarship that it actually violates the basic Wikipedia standard of no original research. Based on these criteria, Gaza does not presently qualify. What "many authoritative sources" are you referring to?

In contrast, it's rather shocking that Oct 7, 2023 is not listed, which is about as textbook a case of genocide as they come - the perpetrators themselves publicly declared their genocidal intent and indeed there is a separate Wikipedia article on it. Why is the latter not included here? ~~ Narc (talk) 19:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason you're making this same comment twice here? [1] IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:36, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Here you go. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 22:28, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Ianbrettcooper

For anybody who feigns ignorance of these sources, which must at this point be simply in bad faith, the United Nations is officially examining what Israel is doing in Gaza for its constituting a genocide. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/there-must-be-due-reckoning-horrific-violations-possible-atrocity-crimes عبد المؤمن (talk) 23:04, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The United Nations has not (or has yet to) conclude that genocide is or has taken place in Gaza. Does Wikipedia pretence to have more authority on the topic than international courts? --2A00:23C5:6433:4301:6DA1:980D:A0D:4500 (talk) 06:40, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Genocides against Tibetan and Uyghur peoples by the Chinese Communist Party.

Where are the active genocides against the Muslim Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province and against Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet?

To call these atrocities anything other than genocide is a disgrace. If Israel's actions in Palestine can be called a genocide, then the CCP's ongoing attempt to exterminate and sinophy the Uyghur and Tibetan peoples and religions should absolutely be labelled a genocide. Jbak0905 (talk) 09:45, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

"Uyghur genocide" was previously listed in the article but was removed for failing the inclusion criteria back when we used the UN definition. Now that the inclusion criteria has changed it may be time for another discussion about it. TRCRF22 (talk) 12:45, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Under the new inclusion criteria Uyghur should certainly be included. Tibet is usually characterized as a 'cultural genocide' so would require further discussion to establish clear consensus—blindlynx 14:28, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

@Endwise: As the user who removed the Uyghur genocide entry from the list, could you offer an opinion? TRCRF22 (talk) 09:56, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

It should be noted that one of the reasons for removing it was a lack of death toll. Every single entry in the article's list has a death toll. The Uyghur genocide, when it was listed here, was the only entry that did not have a death toll. Given that the article Uyghur genocide itself had its title changed to Persecution of Uyghurs in China, you should first go there and argue for a restoration of that article's title. But you should familiarize yourself with the subject matter and the discussion behind the decision here. JasonMacker (talk) 17:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

These are considered “cultural genocide” if I am not mistaken, as opposed to genocide in the liter sense here, the mass killing of thousands of people with intent to destroy them The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 05:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

There is no factual basis for the claim that the Chinese government is attempting to exterminate Uyghurs or Tibetans. And that probably has a lot to do with why it's not included here. 2601:645:D00:4B80:7C84:2092:82F3:4E1D (talk) 07:39, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Siege of Leningrad body count

Perusing the list, I was confused by the lack of a precise body count for the Siege of Leningrad. The lowest estimate is listed as the incredibly vague "more than 1 million", and there is no higher estimate. Surely there must be more detailed casualty counts than this available. TRCRF22 (talk) 20:03, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd also like to add that formatting it like that is strange as 1) 'lowest estimate' already implies more than the number given and 2) not having it be a number makes it appear above the Holocaust when sorting the list by 'lowest estimate'. I propose changing it to '1,000,000' to fix both of these problems (any other change non-withstanding). Citation unneeded (talk) 13:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The siege of Leningrad wikipedia page gives a more precise estimate of 1,042,000 civilian deaths. I would suggest that this would be a better number to use. 82.47.186.69 (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

tamil genocide

there’s an article on it. why not included on list? 157.131.130.26 (talk) 07:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Update upper bound for Gaza Genocide

As noted in the efn, the value is derived by multiplying the given lower bound of the Gazan Health Ministry reported at the time by 5.

Applying this to the current lower bound gives us 213,590 dead people.

Would it be possible to reflect that in the article or are such trivial calculations not allowed? Laura240406 (talk) 02:20, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

 Question: @Laura240406: I don't see where the higher bound is recieved by multiplying by 5. I see '4 indirect deaths per 1 direct death'. As long as "multiply it by 5" is actually how this is calculated, and is supported by reliable sources, it is allowed in the article and is not original research per WP:CALC. — BerryForPerpetuity (talk) 15:44, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

To quote the study in question: "Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

The 37396 deaths reported correspond to the direct deaths in the equation and 37396 plus 4 times 37396 is 37396 times 5 and that is 186980. Laura240406 (talk) 17:33, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

Why is this genocide not included in the list? It was a large genocide of Poles, where around 100000 Poles were killed by UPA militias. On the list we have aslo have other genocides done by fasists militias/partisants (Genocides done by the Chetniks), so Volhynia genocide should be aslo included. Szturnek_¿? 16:24, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Genocide of germany 1940-1945

In total, Allied bombing campaigns conducted by the UK and US are estimated to have killed between 305,000 and 410,000 German civilians during World War II.

If Gaza genocide is included, so should this. 2A00:23C5:6433:4301:6DA1:980D:A0D:4500 (talk) 06:37, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

This is not how content decisions are made. Content decisions should be based on reliable sources and Wikipedia policy. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:42, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I can provide a source for the civillian death toll of ww2. Could you explain what you mean by 'Content decisions should be based on reliable sources and Wikipedia policy.'; does this not conform to policy? If so you must cite the policy. 2A00:23C5:6433:4301:6DA1:980D:A0D:4500 (talk) 09:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

You would need WP:reliable sources which explicitly call the bombings a genocide. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 09:36, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Sure. The statement "if A is included, then B should be included", where A=Gaza genocide and B=Allied bombing campaigns is an invalid decision procedure. The inclusion of B has no dependency on the inclusion of A, or vice versa. The inclusion test for this article is "classified as genocide by significant scholarship" and that test should be applied independently to A and B. So, you can see that providing a civilian death toll statistic wouldn't tell you anything about whether an event has been "classified as genocide by significant scholarship". Only sampling reliable sources can answer that question. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

It's an interesting thing to think about. In germany 300-400k civillians were bombed, and in Japan a similar number were killed by the atomic bombs. These were defensive wars fought by the US and UK. But in abscence of some journalist/scholar calling that Genocide, it isn't, and the bombing of gaza, which is a defensive war fought by Israel, is a genocide because a scholar did. Where is the explanation for why Gaza is a genocide in distinction to other strategic bombing such as in ww2? And why is the fact that international courts have not determined gaza to be a genocide taken into account? 2A00:23C5:6433:4301:6DA1:980D:A0D:4500 (talk) 09:59, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Fundamentally you're correct about a lot of this analysis, but ultimately it's WP:OR. Wikipedia includes things based on the prevalence of reliable sources. Sources currently describe Gaza as a genocide, but not Germany. — Czello ^(music) 10:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Thinking about it probably won't help. I find not thinking about it, not caring and just following the policies and guidelines works better in Wikipedia. Having an expectation of consistency, that things should make sense, seems to be almost always wrong. Reliable sources just say what they say. The information doesn't need to be globally consistent or make sense. And like Czello says, Wikipedia content just reflects reliable source content. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 November 2024

Remove inclusion of Gaza Genocide. Reason: Significant scholarship calling this as a genocide is not currently cited, instead a litany of speculative op-eds has been listed such as under Citation 14. A very large amount of coal doesn't constitute diamonds, it is the verifiability of the sources which count. One of the best sources we have for this is the International Court of Justice, which has not concluded genocide has or is occurring; seemingly they did not find significant verifiable scholarship - but the open encyclopedia managed it? 2A00:23C5:6433:4301:6DA1:980D:A0D:4500 (talk) 15:29, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Not done. There is consensus to include this. See Talk:List of genocides/Archive 15#RFC - Inclusion of Gaza genocide. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Lowest Gaza genocide killings estimate correction

• Please change the lowest estimated killing for the Gaza genocide entry from 42,718 to 118,908

  −

  42,718

  +

  118,908

  :
• The 42,718 figure is the lowest *direct* deaths estimate, not the lowest *total* deaths estimate. The lowest total deaths estimate, including the minimum number of direct and indirect deaths, is 118,908. I got this information (cited below) from a source cited directly in the Gaza genocide article’s “Deaths” section:
• (both references are the same, just not sure if the pdf link works so I included the archive link as well):

CheezyCheddar (talk) 04:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

References

Not done for now: The link you provide seems to be a self-published PDF, with no evidence of reliability. Even going based on that, through an admittedly short skim of the document, it cites a minimum death toll of ~41,000. I would recommend reading through Wikipedia:Reliable sources for what is considered "reliable" on Wikipedia. — BerryForPerpetuity (talk) 15:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Proposing to remove Gaza Genocide from the list

This page has recently become a firestorm due to the inclusion of the accused Gaza Genocide into the page. The insertion of the Gaza Genocide into the page is as blatant of a NPOV violation that you could possibly get. The ninth word in the Gaza Genocide article is accused. Not committing, nor committed, accused. Even the ICJ, who is spearheading the investigation into Israel's action in Gaza, has not classified Israel's actions as genocidal. I propose to open a new discussion about the inclusion of Gaza Genocide on this page. Pyramids09 (talk) 08:54, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Based on this, and the recent increase in the number of non-extended confirmed interactions with the page, I assume off-site social media activity/coordination/influence operations etc. may be impacting the talk page. Apparently is extremely easy to manipulate susceptible people and send them to Wikipedia to do something. If it continues the talk page may need to be EC-protected. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:25, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

There has been a clear uptick in comments made on this talk page recently, all essentially saying the same thing. I agree that an EC protection might be necessary (given that one needs to be EC to participate here beyond basic edit requests). — Czello ^(music) 10:27, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, whether "This page has recently become a firestorm" or not is not relevant to our internal processes and discussions about content. Wikipedia editors make the content decisions based on our rules regardless of what is happening off-site. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:32, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

@ScottishFinnishRadish. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 10:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

IOHANNVSVERVS, I reverted the strike out because Pyramids09 was granted extendedconfirmed on 2021-06-25, 67 days after registration. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:52, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, my striking their edit was a mistake. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 10:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Expressing sympathy and thanks to IOHANNVSVERVS. Even trying to keep up with this talk page is beyond me. Thank you for trying to keep some order here. I'd have probably just left WP for a while. CAVincent (talk) 11:10, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is largely off-topic. Regarding the suggestion of Pyramids09 that we "open a new discussion about the inclusion of Gaza Genocide", I don't think that's a good idea as we just had a lengthy RfC on this question which was closed on Sept 3.[2] Also of note is the inclusion criteria of this list, which is stated in the lead of the article:

This list includes all events which have been classified as genocide by significant scholarship. As there are varying definitions of genocide, this list includes events around which there is ongoing scholarly debate over their classification as genocide and is not a list of only events which have a scholarly consensus to recognize them as genocide.s genocide.

-IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)