Talk:Social cleansing

The Pamphlet Scandal was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 6 May 2016 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Social cleansing. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Social cleansing was nominated as a Social sciences and society good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (January 17, 2015). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

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I most recently added/amended the original sections on social cleansing in Guatemala and Brazil. I also updated the "Causes--South America" section with some more information and sources, and I renamed it to "Causes--Latin America," since the issues in Guatemala heavily overlap with its South American counterparts. I also cleaned up my citations by combining those that overlapped. I cleaned up some grammar and formatting errors that I found in the article as well. I additionally added links to this page on the pages for street children and witch-hunting. I finally nominated the article for "good article" status. As always, any feedback on the article would be appreciated! Rgalts (talk) 07:40, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The recent edits made to this article are truly fantastic! The additions have added greatly to the scope of the topic covered and the author has done a good job of organizing the large amount of information relevant to this topic. Very comprehensive. This article is very well sourced, with nearly every assertion followed by a citation, and when POVs are stated they are attributed to their sources. This article had great active voice, style, organization, and grammar. Very readable and easy to understand. My one suggestion would be that additional sources, specifically to the South America section, would greatly increase the credibility of the article. Overall great job! MCRU (talk) 00:30, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I want to praise the edits that Rgalts made on this article. The user has extended the article tremendously, in terms of the content and the sources. The organization of the article especially is well developed, as it starts out with broad scope of the issue, narrows down to comprehensive understanding of the key countries, and ends with broad perspective again. Moreover, the sources are scholarly sources, and the notes section allows the readers to navigate through the sources that the user has listed. One thing I would recommend is this: You should also add “victims and methods”, “Perpetrators and motivations”, and “other actors” for Brazil and Guatemala sections. This way, all of the key countries of this issue will be represented equally, without Colombia over-representing or overwhelming the entire article. Keep up the good work! Lindaticket (talk) 20:30, 5 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I made edits related to the suggestions from my classmates. I added several citations, and I reorganized the “Causes—Africa” section to make it more coherent. I still am trying to decide how I want to do my citations, as my notes section is getting quite lengthy, so I am considering changing this. Any recommendations here would be greatly appreciated.I also expanded the article extensively. I wrote the “Causes—South America” section, and then I began to work on the “Social cleansing in Colombia” section. I wrote the “Victims and Methods” sub-section and split it up by victim group. I also wrote the sub-sections of “Perpetrators and Motivations” and “Other actors”. I still need to work on writing about social cleansing in Brazil and in Guatemala. I have not yet decided if I am going to keep them as their own sections or if I am going to include them in the “Other countries” at the bottom. I am beginning to realize that the information on social cleansing in these countries is much more limited, so this change may be necessary. I have tried to give appropriate information while still being somewhat concise. I also plan to add connections to the article in related articles once I have revised and completed my contributions to the article. There are also some places where I need to work on neutral point of view, and, as I mentioned before, I need to consider changing my citation format. Any feedback would be wonderful! Rgalts (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I expanded the introduction to provide a more comprehensive description of what social cleansing is and the actors involved. I may eventually also give a brief history, as some articles have mentioned similarities with witch killing in Europe in the 16th-18th century, but I am undecided currently about whether this is necessary. Following the research available, I am focusing primarily on social cleansing in African and South American countries. For my initial contribution, I completed all of the relevant sections related to countries in Africa. I first added a “Causes” section broken up by continent. Many of the articles that I have read have extensive commentary on large-scale societal issues that are related to the phenomenon of social cleansing that are distinct from individual motivations. I discussed this in the sub-section on Africa, and I intend to also add a section for South America, as these broad causes are very connected to continents. I currently have kept the sections on Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala, but I have not yet updated them. I plan to extensively expand these sections in the same format that I did for the Tanzania section. I have not yet decided if I will keep Brazil and Guatemala as sub-sections, or if I will move that information to the “South America” sub-section of the “Other countries” section. I may do this because of limited amount of information available on these countries compared to Colombia. I added the section “Social cleansing in Tanzania,” and split it up into three sub-sections “Victims and Methods,” “Perpetrators and Motivations,” and “Other Actors.” I intend for all of the sections on individual countries to follow this format. I also added the section “Social cleansing in other countries.” I did this because there were several countries mentioned repeatedly in my research that clearly have examples of social cleansing, but these countries simply do not have extensive academic studies written on them that would merit enough information for their own section. I split this section up by continent, and I will be adding more sub-sections to it. Many of these countries do not have scholarly articles written on their social cleansing phenomena, but there are news articles, so I may try to note this in some way and include information. I also updated the “See also” section, adding articles on related issues such as Genocide, Police brutality, Political cleansing, Street children, Violence against LGBT people and Witch hunt. There is still a considerable amount of work that I need to do on this page. As I stated, I am focusing primarily on African and South American countries for this article. I completed everything related to Africa, but I still need to edit and expand the entries on South American countries (Social cleansing in Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia) as well as write the sub-section for South American countries under “Causes”. I will likely delete what is currently written and replace it. I also am not sure exactly how to format the “Notes” section, as I switch between 4 different sources for the information on Africa, and the same source is repeated over and over. I would appreciate any insights on how I might better this. I read on the Wikipedia citation page that Ibid is discouraged due to the potential of future edits. Any and all feedback on what I have already written and what I plan to do! Rgalts (talk) 09:50, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The existing article is extremely lacking in both depth and breadth. Though a part of 6 WikiProjects, including mid-importance status in WikiProject Human Rights, the article is a stub and only rated start-class. Though an equally pertinent social phenomenon, the social cleansing article is not nearly as well developed as articles on brother issues such as ethnic and political cleansing. The definition of social cleansing could be expanded to more comprehensively cover the issue as it has been explained by scholars and also provide a brief history on the development of the term and the phenomenon. I would like to completely reorganize the article by continent instead of country, as I see a lot of similarities in social cleansing in the countries already discussed. While I agree that some of these sections could probably be articles in their own right, since this parent page is not well developed, I primarily want to focus on expanding this page. I have found sufficient existing research to at least provide substantial information on South America and Africa. I would like to start the article by including sections about actors (victims, perpetrators, and outside actors), motivations, and methods, and then include sections based on continent, with sub-sections by country. The article needs a great expansion of information, as the research on social cleansing, particularly in Colombia, is very rich. It would also be valuable to expand the "See also" section to related articles such as Homelessness in the United States, Violence against LGBT people, and Police brutality. I plan to use scholarly sources such as law reviews from the University of Miami and Yale University, journals including Journal of Human Rights and Journal of International Development, and reports from human rights commissions. Finally, I intend to add the article to WikiProject Discrimination. My contribution is part of an assignment for my coursework in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities at Rice University. I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions! Rgalts (talk) 06:19, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone might have a better idea as to structure, but to me it seems that the best way to move forward is to do it by country. Some of these sections could probably be articles in their own right.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 01:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know this article appears to be well-sourced, but it looks to me like it's imbued with a dangerous amount of original research. For example, based on the kinds of facts that tend to be attributed to each source, I'm guessing that none of them actually give a cohesive, all-encompassing definition of "social cleansing" as the lead implies. Furthermore, it looks like most, if not all, of these examples of social cleansing have been added at the editor's discretion without the sources connecting them to social cleansing, with the intention of propagating a narrative of an all-encompassing kyriarchy. I mean, look at these sentences: "Though female victims account for 10% of all homicides, over 18% of cadavers with signs of torture indicating social cleansing were female.[63]. Furthermore, 2% of female victims of homicide are prostitutes, a common victim group of social cleansing efforts". No context is given; the reader is just suppose to conclude "Colombia hates women because 18% > 10%." We also have no idea what the percentage of Colombia's female population are prostitutes, so we have no idea how high, if at all, 2% is in relation, and even if we did, the sources would have to explain how this gap is necessarily tied to social cleansing.

Of course, I can't judge anything too harshly here because I haven't read any of the sources, which conveniently are all offline except for one PDF, but I would urge the GA reviewer to take extreme caution with sourcing and generalization. Tezero (talk) 07:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I really appreciate your feedback on the article. I wish that my sources could be available to all readers, but unfortunately I only had access to them through subscriptions from my university. However, I can confirm that comprehensive definitions of social cleansing were indeed given by the sources. I was very worried about creating a narrative of the events that have taken place, but my research continually used the term 'social cleansing' to define what was happening. Even though similar occurrences have been mentioned in other countries, I have decided to exclude these for the reason that the term 'social cleansing,' has not explicitly been used there, even though based on the definition they would technically apply. To address your objections to the section on Guatemala, I will quote the original piece. I hope that I have accurately reflected what was said. However, if I haven't, do you have any suggestions for how I might rephrase to be more clear/neutral in my point of view? So far, I have directly quoted Sanford making the connection between torture and social cleansing, and I am about to add a sentence regarding the study done by the PDH. These suggestions were extremely helpful, and please let me know if you see any other areas where I could improve the article.

"The cause of death, the location of the cadavers, and the profile of the victims can serve as indicators of the existence of social cleansing. Likewise, signs of torture can indicate social cleansing. In 2004, 22 cadavers were found with signs of torture. In 2005, there were 305 cases. Among these 305 cases, there were 403 marks from different types of torture— the most common being marks of strangulation, followed by a bullet to the head, blows to the head and body, and bound hands and feet were the other signs most frequently reported. Of the 305 cadavers with signs of torture, more than 18 percent of the victims were women, although they comprise 10 percent of all homicides. Women with signs of torture also had signs of sexual abuse. Of the 5,338 homicides in 2005, some 648 cadavers were found in a place different from where they were killed (PDH 2006a). This means that the victim was detained and taken somewhere to be killed. Then the cadaver was transported and dumped at another location. Because social infrastructure and resources are necessary to carry out this type of premeditated murder, it may be defined as social cleansing when a pattern can be established. (Sanford 2010, p.111)

"While the link between the killing of women and social cleansing may not be immediately visible given that only two percent of women murdered have been prostitutes, I suggest that the killing of women justifies social cleansing because blaming gangs for the killing of women becomes a reason to carry out social cleansing on poor, young men. Moreover, prostitutes are not necessarily the only potential targets of social cleansing. A PDH (Human Rights Ombudsman – Procuraduria de Derechos Humanos) study on social cleansing found that the increase in the number of women killed whose bodies bore marks of torture and other sadistic abuse accounted for 40 percent of the total increase in female murders in 2005." (Sanford 2010, p.118) Rgalts (talk) 20:57, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the sources describe incidents like these as social cleansing, then regardless of how sloppy I may think that definition is, I can't complain. Thanks for responding, btw. Tezero (talk) 20:58, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Social cleansing/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Antidiskriminator (talk · contribs) 09:36, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	The prose is clear and concise. No copyright issues discovered. No grammar issues discovered. It would be better if text could more rely on figures instead of vague expressions like "many" or "often" in, by their nature exceptional, claims about violence.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	The existing lede does not properly summarize even the existing text of the article. Once the text of the article adress all major concerns, the lede should be expanded to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. There are other issues described in section below but they are more improvement opportunities than obstacle for GA status. They include WP:UNDERLINK, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings) and too long TOC.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Using "Sfn" template instead of simple text would be better because it would lead readers directly to the cited work. Also, addition of the external links for online sources would be good. Anyway, all of those remarks are not GA status issues.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	There are a couple of remarks regarding source interpretation in section below, but they are not GA status issues.
	2c. it contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	The article does not address the main aspects of the topic. It says almost nothing about the history of the phenomenon and Social cleansing outside Africa and Latin America.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Addition of images would be beneficial.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	The history of social cleansing and social cleansing outside Africa and Latin America should be added to the article. The lede should be expanded to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead.

• Source interpretation
  • The article says "Most scholars agree that the cause of social cleansing efforts is a result of "interaction of economic conditions and cultural factors." - That is not what the source says. It does not mention scholarly consensus at all. It actually elaborates "the possible interaction of economic conditions and cultural factors". I think the text should be ammended to interpret source more precise. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:44, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article implies that in Africa scholars discovered positive correlations between extreme rainfall and murder of witches trough large negative income shocks and famine. That is not what source says. It clearly explains there are many potential estimation concerns that could "produce a spurious positive correlation between extreme rainfall reports and witch killing". I propose to present this information to the readers who could be otherwise mislead to believe that extreme rainfalls will necessarily result with witch killing.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• MOS
  • WP:UNDERLINK - There are large portions of text without wikilinks.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 20:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:03, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down. This is not GA request, only an improvement opportunity.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:05, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disambiguation - The See also section contains one link to disambiguation page (Political cleansing).--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarity of prose - The text of the article extensively uses vague expressions like many or often in, by their nature exceptional, claims about violence. It would be good to use figures instead, i.e. x% of children are abused. Otherwise readers could be mislead.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:26, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • When? - If some 1996 source says that beggars were killed by police in Colombia, it is necessary to put this statement in context and to explain when this happened and what is the situation now? The source is almost 20 years old. Things are not necessarily always the same. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Scope
  • The article deals only with Africa and Latin America, except very short subsection at the end of article that mentions Asia. What about other regions? I found many sources about social cleansing taking part in Central America, Europe, ...
  • What about history of this fenomenon? There are sources about social cleansing taking part in history, i.e. in Soviet Union, Nazi Germany .... ?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 20:25, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Lede
  • After the text of the article is corrected to adress all valid concerns, the lede should be expanded to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The existing lede does not properly summarize even the existing text of the article.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:36, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Images
  • There are no images in this article. Addition of images would be beneficial. This is not request for GA statu, only an improvemen opportunity.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Related templates
  • There are related templates to which this article should probably be added and consequently they should be added to this article. I.e. Template:Discrimination and/or Template:Discrimination sidebar.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:35, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Failing the nomination - Since no action has been taken for more than 7 days I am going to fail this nomination. This article is exceptionally good work. I am sorry that nominator obviously did not have enough time to address the concerns. I am sure it will be easy for them to resolve this couple of (quite important) issues as soon as they, or somebody else, have some time for that. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 18:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for reviewing the article, Antidiskriminator! You mentioned a problem with the scope, specifically that "[t]he article deals only with Africa and Latin America, except very short subsection at the end of article that mentions Asia. What about other regions? I found many sources about social cleansing taking part in Central America, Europe, ..." Would you be able to point me in the direction of these sources? Though I found several sources discussing "social cleansing" in London related to housing policies, I did not find any sources on other parts of the world that explicitly refer to the phenomenon as social cleansing. While I understand that several historical instances may qualify, it was only for South America and Africa that I found the term social cleansing used by scholars. I would really like to be able to appropriately expand the scope of the article and have the article qualify as a good article. Thanks again! Rgalts (talk) 23:41, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• "Several historical instances" are actually very important cases of massive social cleansing under historical regimes such as Nazi or Communist. I am sure it is easy to find sources for that, but if you have problem with it I am willing to help.
• Rest of the world cases are also quite eaasy to be googled. Here some examles found by quickly google searching:
  • Matyók, Thomas; Senehi, Jessica; Byrne, Sean (19 May 2011). Critical Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy. Lexington Books. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-7391-4962-1. "Social cleansing" of street children in Latin America, Turkey, India, Bulgaria, and Kenya, ...
  • Hinton, Mercedes S.; Newburn, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy and Director Mannheim Centre for Criminology Tim; Newburn, Tim (25 September 2008). Policing Developing Democracies. Routledge. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-134-08873-7. Extrajudicial killings by police, whether through death squads, contract killings, or social cleansing, are also serious problems in Brazil, India, Kenya, and Nigeria, and to a lesser extent in Russia, Serbia, and Turkey. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
  • Brocklehurst, Helen (2006). Who's Afraid of Children?: Children, Conflict and International Relations. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-7546-4171-1. This 'social cleansing' ridding the streets of vermin...The phenomenon has also been reported in India, Turkey, Bulgaria and Kenya,
  • Information on Violence, Discrimination, and Social Cleansing of Street People in Mexico
  • NGO Demands Halt of “Social Cleansing” in Juárez
  • hrw - India: Stop ‘Social Cleansing’ in Bangalore
  • Beijing announces pre-Olympic social clean up
  • The Death Penalty: Beyond Abolition. Council of Europe. 2004. p. 11. ISBN 978-92-871-5333-3. ... China... or drugs trafficking, but looking more like part of a social cleansing process.
  • Urban guerrillas and paramilitary militias battle to control the sprawling slums in south Bogota, while pros titutes, homosexuals and drug addicts are regularly murdered by 'social cleansing' death squads.

.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 09:09, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the feedback, Antidiskriminator! However, I am not exactly sure how I would move forward with this information. While I have found a few articles that discuss social cleansing in relation to Stalin, information seems to be limited. With Nazi Germany, most sources focus on ethnic cleansing, and though killings of the poor/mentally disabled/sexual minorities did occur, I have not found scholars who have explicitly labeled this as social cleansing, so it would not be appropriate to include it without it becoming original research. This is the reason that I did not include such cases in the article, because it was only for Africa, South and Central Americas, and a few countries in Asia that I found information where the problem was explicitly labeled as social cleansing. Some of the sources you provided listed countries I did not mention, but I did not see enough information for me to be able to write any considerable amount of text about these countries such as Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, etc. If any of this is an oversight on my part, please let me know.

Second, most of the links listed regard social cleansing as a housing policy that removes disadvantaged groups from certain areas. While this is definitely an important topic, perhaps it should be a disambiguation from this article, which focuses on social cleansing as class-based killing. However, it could also be included in a separate section that discusses this housing discrimination as an alternative definition of social cleansing. Do you have any suggestions for how I might move forward? Thanks again! --Rgalts (talk) 23:41, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I think you should move forward exactly how I explained in my above review. By addition of:
  1. the history of social cleansing - Modern-day SC is of course terrible and deserves to be significant, if not major, part of the text. Still, it is only a top of the iceberg of SC troughout the history. It is incomparable in terms of effects it had on people and number of affected people. I don't know when it started. Some scholars mention SC during Paris Commune. Sources on social cleansing conducted by communists are not limited. They extensively elaborate this phenomenon. I think that communists were responsible for probably the largest campaign of "social cleansing" in the history. Tens of millions people were "cleansed" just because they belonged to the wrong social class. Most notable examples are those in Soviet Union, Cambodia, China.... SC happened almost everywhere where communists came to power. They dealt with old "rulling class" to prepare ground for their rule. In USSR - "At least ten million peasants died in violnce, famine, .... Bukharin described the social cleansing of the farmer class as the "mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, together with their wives and children.", in Cambodia - He was held possessed by the idea of social cleansing. Pol Pot's activities amount to one of the worst genocides in the twentieth century. 'Dancing in Cambodia' is an answer to all questions regarding Pol Pot's regime of isolation. ...
  2. social cleansing outside Africa and Latin America - Many of the links I provided above are unrelated to housing issues. It should not be hard to find sources, especially for India, Mexico....--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, your only source to conclude that "social cleansing" against homeless people, prostitutes and whatnot is a systematic phenomena in Colombia, is an essay (and a very poorly written one) from 22 years ago, with no sources or quotations at all? That's not academic or encyclopedic at all.

Murders of homeless people or prostitutes are very far from being that common in today's Colombia and there isn't any evidence proving otherwise. No matter what your political stance is, or how strong your bias is against Colombian Government or whatever. --JoacoCanal (talk) 23:32, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I've come across this article in 2021, I think it might be worth considering adding either a section or sentence on the different meanings associated with the term social cleansing. This is also explored above. I live in London and have a fairly good working knowledge of the housing rights scene here and I can confirm the point above that the term 'social cleansing' is not really associated with violence and killing in a literal sense, though sadly the effects of forced displacement can have tragic consequences. Instead, it is really only equated with displacement, gentrification and market forces that push lower-income communities away from their networks and the centre of cities. I thought I'd make that point as it might add a bit more to the article. --Mattbenjamin2021 09:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2014 Fall term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:26, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]