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This dispute concerns whether or not this finding of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry:

"3.70 None of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm or (with the probable exception of Gerald Donaghey) a bomb of any description."[1]

is equivalent to:

"The report found that all of those shot were unarmed"

I failed in my first attempt to create this RfC, and since this went up I've changed it twice. I know its asking a lot, but please AGF for a sec: as I stated in this edit when I suggesting eliciting outside comment, I believe the heart of this dispute is my assertion that A is NOT equivalent to B. Thanks, and Cheers! LoveUxoxo (talk) 11:12, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have deliberately excluded the source I provided above. I shall provide it again any many more (for the benefit of anyone else the 13/14 discrepancy is due to whether John Johnston is included in the total, since he died months later of causes attributed by others to his injuries):

• "The Bloody Sunday Inquiry report found that all those killed were unarmed"
• "IT HAS been nearly four decades since "Bloody Sunday", when 14 innocent and unarmed civil rights marchers died"
• "British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized Tuesday for the army's killing of 14 protesters in Northern Ireland 38 years ago, as the government issued a long-awaited report concluding that the protesters were unarmed."
• "Britain apologized Tuesday for Bloody Sunday--one of Northern Ireland's darkest days in which 13 unarmed Catholic protestors were killed"
• "into the killings of 14 unarmed demonstrators"
• "after a long-awaited report said all those shot were unarmed"
• "Lord Saville's 12 year inquiry concluded that 14 unarmed boys and men died"
• "The report found the order to fire shouldn’t have been given and the victims were unarmed"

And so on to infinity virtually. That LoveUxoxo has his own personal interpretation of the findings is irrelevant. A soldier "must identify a weapon" before opening fire, which does not mean shooting because someone has a suspicious bulge in their clothing. O Fenian (talk) 08:12, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O Fenian: this is my fault as I was lazy and instead of finding the correct section in Saville I just used the Guardian article (which I trusted to provide an accurate quote). I have edited the RfC above so that now it quotes verbatim the Bloody Sunday Inquiry's finding and provides a link to the appropriate section of the Report. I did not intend to make this a RfC about appropriate sources, due weight, etc., just if what we have stated in the article as Saville's finding(s) can be considered an accurate summary. Cheers! LoveUxoxo (talk) 09:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

O Fenian: as you can see I edited this RfC twice, are you OK with that? *sadderz* LoveUxoxo (talk) 11:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly they are not equivalent. Does User:O Fenian think they are? Headlines will sometimes throw around the term 'unarmed' to create sensationalism. They may have been without 'firearms', but armed with other weapons. Niluop (talk) 01:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Niloup (arguing the other side since I want to be very careful here), what the report found was only that it was "probable" that (only) one person shot had nail bombs in his possession, and that when he was shot the soldiers who shot him did not know this, nor if they did that would not have given them justification for firing. All that out of the way, yes, my belief is that it is wrong to state that the report found that all that were shot were unarmed. LoveUxoxo (talk) 06:09, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On one hand, Wikipedia is about verifiability over truth, but on the other hand the news articles seem to clearly misrepresent the report itself. This would be best resolved by stating both cases so as to be as neutral and verifiable as possible. Perhaps something to the extent:

News media covering the report stated that all of the casualties were unarmed, however the report itself only went as far as to confirm that the casualties were not carrying firearms or bombs.

I think something like this would cover both sides of the issue in a reasonably neutral manner and leave judgement to the reader, as it should. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 04:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Techno, you made me think whether your suggestion was appropriate, and while I could imagine of extreme cases where there would be such a strong disconnect between an official report and the media's reporting of its findings, this ain't it. Please don't view the above headlines as a representative sample, because they are not. A WP:CHERRY contest doesn't seem to me the way to "prove" anything, but I think if you look will find a strong correlation that the more in-depth articles about the report's findings, and the ones written days after the reports release (as opposed to hours), avoid stating "unarmed". Cheers LoveUxoxo (talk) 18:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• not equivalent. Wording from the inquiry ("None of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm or (with the probable exception of Gerald Donaghey) a bomb of any description."[2]) is relevent to the article and should be added to it. --BoogaLouie (talk) 19:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• More or less equivalent. I saw the RFC, it looks to me as though that we're really just arguing semantics here, "not armed with firearms" or "unarmed" are more or less the same thing, especially when the later is backed by a reliable secondary source. The original report is a primary source, and should not be used here anyways. Even if we go by the report, the "unarmed" classification is implied, unless there is a reliable source that says they were armed with cold weapons. I suspect that some British apologist/nationalist denial/guilt might be at play here. Unfortunately, we have a similar situation at Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état, where editors with similar concerns are on a crusade to downplay and whitewash the British/American role in the CiA/MI6-led coup, some going as far as arguing that there was no coup, and that the coup was actually a "popular uprising" or "civil war" with little or no British/American involvement. Similarly, nationalist editors from Turkey, also do their best to deny and whitewash any past genocide or massacres committed by the Ottoman Empire. National guilt, revisionism, soap-boxing, whatever you call it, it's becoming a real problem in Wikipedia. Kurdo777 (talk) 05:22, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Kurdo777, I hear what you are saying, although I disagree. As for WP:RS, in the crush of news media coverage in the hours following the release of the Inquiry's report you will find many contradictions. This can best be illustrated by performing a search yourself for news stories from that day and see how many of them say "13 killed" versus "14 killed" ...38 years later even that one basic fact is not agreed upon. I think you will find that the articles with the more in-depth analysis tend to be more careful with their words, specifically "unarmed". Semantics IS very important here, as editors we should strive to find wording that summarizes this, arguably the most important finding of the Inquiry, in BOTH spirit and letter. There are many ways to do this - I'd be happy with any of the following statements singularly or in any combination, all of which a practically verbatim from the report of the Inquiry:

• None of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm or (with the probable exception of Gerald Donaghey) a bomb of any description.
• "None of the casualties shot was armed with a firearm"
• "None [of the casualties shot] was posing any threat of causing death or serious injury."
• "[None of the casualties shot] was doing anything (...) that could on any view justify their shooting."
• "None of [the soldiers] fired in response to attacks or threatened attacks by nail or petrol bombers."

I don't understand how any of those statements can by viewed as anything less than a complete exoneration of those who were shot. Cheers! LoveUxoxo (talk) 15:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Kurdo777 that the report is a primary source and we should go with the reliable second sources which clear state "unarmed". Bjmullan (talk) 18:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What if the findings are mentioned in a secondary source such as BBC here? or sunday observer (Sri Lanka) here? (I apologize for having inadvertently dragged the issue of Iranian 1953 coup article into your RfC. I'm the editor Kurdo is complaining about, but am not "on a crusade to downplay and whitewash the British/American role in the CiA/MI6-led coup", only trying to get a mention of the military and Iranian involvment in the coup.) --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Equivalent. If they were not armed with firearms or bombs, what kind of weapens would they have carried? Hurleys? Stones? Against a trained military force armed with firearms of any kind, you are in fact unarmed. Eddylandzaat (talk) 11:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

a bomb. Gerald Donaghey may possibly have been carrying a bomb. "None of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm or (with the probable exception of Gerald Donaghey) a bomb of any description." --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm responding to the RfC. If the report said that one of them probably was carrying a firearm or a bomb, then they're not at all equivalent. If news reports are wrong, then we shouldn't be using them. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:49, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It sounds like the term 'unarmed' is inappropriate, since it is inaccurate. If the protesters possessed bombs, visible to the shooters or not, a clear description is not simply the term 'unarmed'. If what is meant is "without firearms", then I think the article should be clear. Niluop (talk) 02:15, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There appears to be plenty of fundamental misunderstanding of the events of Bloody Sunday, and the "rules of engagement" (or Yellow Card rules, to be specific) that the British Army were bound by.

The contention of the British Army is that all those shot were armed with a gun or bomb, and that they were shot in accordance with the Yellow Card rules, which can be found in the Widgery Report.

• "You may fire without warning

• 13 Either when hostile firing is taking place in your area, and a warning is impracticable, or when any delay could lead to death or serious injury to people whom it is your duty to protect or to yourself; and then only: (emphasis in original)
• (a) against a person using a firearm against members of the security forces or people whom it is your duty to protect; or
• (b) against a person carrying a firearm if you have reason to think he is about to use it for offensive purposes."

• The term "firearm" is defined as including a grenade, nail bomb or gelignite-type bomb.

So the presence, or not, of nail bombs in Donaghy's pockets is irrelevant to his shooting. This is even made clear by Widgery:

• There are two possible explanations of this evidence. First, that the bombs had been in Donaghy’s pockets throughout and had passed unnoticed by the Royal Anglians’ Medical Officer, Dr. Swords, and others who had examined the body; secondly that the bombs had been deliberately planted on the body by some unknown person after the Medical Officer’s examination. These possibilities were exhaustively examined in evidence because, although the matter is a relatively unimportant detail of the events of the afternoon, it is no doubt of great concern to Donaghy’s family. (my emphasis)

Unless he had a nailbomb in his hand at the time either being used against the security forces or public, or they believed he has reason to think he was going to use it for offensive purposes, he couldn't legally be shot. Soldiers do not have the right to open fire based on bulges in pockets that may be nailbombs. Widgery and Saville basically made the same finding regarding Donaghy, but neither of them placed a bomb in his hand at the time he was shot.

While Widgery did not appear to place weapons in the hands of Donaghy and others at the time they were shot, he did believe a number of them were handling weapons due to "evidence", the details of which are available if anyone wants to look at it but isn't really necessary to explain. Saville dismissed the evidence, and found that none of them (with the possible exception of Donaghy) had been in possession of weapons.

If someone wants to add a note directly after unarmed explaining this, then go right ahead. There is no reason why the remaining innocent victims of Bloody Sunday should not be fully vindicated in the text because of Donaghy, which the wording I reverted quite spectacularly failed to do. It instead read like something out of the Widgery Whitewash. All of those shot were unarmed while shot, since they were not holding a weapon. That is backed up by countless sources. If anyone wants to suggest wording that takes this into account knock yourself out, but otherwise I believe a clarification in a footnote regarding unarmed is all that's needed. 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 13:58, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The paragraph about the play seems grossly out of place. I'm reading about people dying and getting killed and then all of a sudden, it starts talking about a play? Why not throw in U2's song while we're at? Dear god, it is in there, in the "Artistic reaction" section. Ugh. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:45, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it's been a month and no one's responded to this discussion. Is it OK if I remove the play? How about the song lyrics, too? I'd rather keep this a serious article and omit the tivia. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it's been five months and no one's objected on the talk page. Rather than removing it from the article, I moved the paragraph to a different section.[3] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:02, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On a vaguely related note, I'm not sure we need the lyrics in there, or if there use is even covered by fair-use since the lyrics themselves aren't the subject of commentary in the article. Any objections to just listing the songs in the section above, assuming they aren't there already? 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 12:18, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Listing them should suffice.Autarch (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While idly perusing the article, this statement jumped out at me. I'm unfamiliar with the sources on the matter, but if it is indeed attributable then it needs to be cited. It's too inflammatory a statement to leave undefended. Throwaway85 (talk) 20:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The narrative section and Narrative of events of Bloody Sunday (1972) say that stones were thrown at police, but later the article says that the Saville Report concluded that stones weren't thrown. Is the Saville Report wrong? If not, the earlier section could be reworded to say something like "according to X, Y and Z stones were thrown at police, although the later Saville Report concluded that this was not the case." --Chriswaterguy talk 08:59, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]