Talk:Black Friday (1978)

Casualities

Hello LouisAragon. I noticed you have just made some edits focusing on the death toll of this incident. I know that the sources are providing very different statistics. I suppose we need to narrow the sources for reporting the toll. See this one, for instance which says 700 - 3000 people were killed according to different accounts. Your thoughts please. --Mhhossein ^talk 08:01, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: the statement "according to different accounts" (p. 115) is very vague, and the 3,000 definitely represents figures by the "opposition", which are known to be biased according to WP:RS sources:

• "The result was a gun battle, a stampede, and—according to the official toll—eighty-six civilian deaths. But the revolutionaries claimed at least three thousand had died, purposely exaggerating the number to fan the flames. It worked, and headlines about three thousand deaths made it all the way into the Western papers." -- Kim Ghattas (2020). Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East. Henry Holt and Co.
• "That same day the army fired into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing sixty-four unarmed civilians—an event that came to be remembered as Black Friday." -- Foltz, Richard. (2016). Iran in World History. Oxford University Press. p. 108
• "Black Friday demonstration, Tehran (September 8, 1978): Protesters killed, 64. Government security forces killed, 30.'"" -- Tucker, Spencer. (2017). The Roots and Consequences of Civil Wars and Revolutions: Conflicts that Changed World History. ABC-CLIO. p. 439
• "The clerical activists, backed by the Qom marja‘s, capitalized on the Jaleh Square massacre to paint the regime as brutal and illegitimate. Aided by a rumor-mongering machine that became fully operational in the absence of reliable media and news reporting, the number of casualties, the “martyrs” on the path of Islam, was inflated to thousands, and the troops who opened fire on them were labeled as Israeli mercenaries who were brought in to crush the revolution." -- Abbas Amanat (2017). Iran: A Modern History. Yale University Press. p. 719
• "(...) the death toll unlikely accounted to more than a hundred casualties". -- Johann Beukes (2020). Foucault in Iran, 1978–1979 . AOSIS. p. 53 (note 26)

So no, there's no way we're going to include a x-thousand figure as a serious estimate in the article. In addition, your source is a 1984 publication, whereas mines are all much more recent. - LouisAragon (talk) 10:25, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

LouisAragon: Thanks, why not dedicating some lines to these controversies? See this for instance: "September 8: The government imposed martial law in Tehran and 11 other major cities. In Tehran, several thousand demonstrators protesting this imposition clashed with troops, who opened fire into the crowd. The death toll, in what came to be known as "Black Friday," was estimated at between 95 and 250, with opposition sources claiming deaths between 2,000 and 3,000". I will try to find more sources. --Mhhossein ^talk 12:33, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Why mention something by a source from 1980 (barely two years after Black Friday) that is not supported by the majority of some much more recent sources? --HistoryofIran (talk) 19:11, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: There is no way we include those 2000/3000 figures in the article, so far, you have proven incapable to provide a single recent source for that. Also, this would be a serious violation of WP:NPOV and WP:DUE.---Wikaviani ^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:27, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Proven incapable? Actually I have not found the chance to go through the sources. --Mhhossein ^talk 18:19, 6 October 2021 (UTC)