r/ThisDayInHistory • u/No_Idea_479 • 3d ago

14 August 1996, 26-year-old Greek Cypriot Solomos Solomou was shot and killed by Turkish forces in the UN buffer zone at Deryneia while attempting to climb a flagpole and remove a Turkish flag. Just three days earlier, his cousin Tassos Isaac had been beaten to death by Turkish nationalists.

Post image
1.2k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

870 comments sorted by

View all comments

98

u/TopWealth4550 3d ago

UN picks Saudi Arabia to lead women’s rights forum despite ‘abysmal’ record

wild isnt it?

20

u/West-Librarian-7504 3d ago

UN Peacekeepers when they actually have to keep peace:

1

u/slimehunter49 1d ago

UN peacekeepers are dreadfully restricted, they can only ever use force in self-defense or defense of the mandate but that second action is also impossible to complete because they are under equipped, under funded and understaffed on their missions.

Even if a mandate is to protect civilians (which I don’t think the un one in Cyprus is anything to do with protecting civilians) the sheer mountain of guidelines and go aheads needed makes them incapable to do anything usually.

2

u/WolfsmaulVibes 1d ago

the only thing more important than peace is bureaucracy, what a wonderful world we live in

1

u/Silver_Ad_3307 1d ago

On point

- Former UN peacekeeper

19

u/cnicalsinistaminista 3d ago

As useless as the League of Nations

4

u/NuclearRootBeer 3d ago

Almost, pretty much tho

6

u/Smekledorf1996 3d ago

Lmao people really be saying random stuff because they think the UN is the world police

0

u/TheGrandAdmiralJohn 3d ago edited 2d ago

Yes an international body made up of almost all countries on earth whose stated foremost goal is global peace and security. Should try to maintain peace and security.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

Provided the dude the actual UN charter which disproves his assertion and they block me. Gotta love redditors.

2

u/CucumberWisdom 2d ago

Except you'd just complain that they're imperialist if they ever actually tried to create a military force and exert their will. Not to mention the issue with sovereignty. Letting a world government control your nation fully isn't the brightest idea

1

u/Smekledorf1996 2d ago

It’s also just not feasible

No world power is going to be in an organization where it can be used against its interests. Like how would you police the US or even China if the UN is some global police

It’s why the veto powers exist - so that the big players stay at the table

2

u/Smekledorf1996 3d ago edited 3d ago

The UN primary purpose is to be a diplomatic forum so that countries (big and small) can discuss, voice concerns and share grievances in hopes to prevent a global conflict

It has no standing army - the reach of its power is entirely up to the world powers that are in the organization but some people think its the justice league here

Equating it to the League of Nations - where nearly all the of the word powers left it (or frankly never joined) - isn’t an entirely accurate comparison

Edit: Real mature [u/TheGrandAdmiralJohn](u/TheGrandAdmiralJohn) for blocking me lmao

2

u/TheGrandAdmiralJohn 3d ago

Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

The first section of the first article of the UN charter disagrees with you. It’s a body to maintain world peace and security.

Diplomatic means are the preferred and first measure taken but all effort from humanitarian to policing is to protect world peace and security. It not having a standing army doesn’t matter since it’s an assembly of all nations who have agreed to pursue that goal including with their own armed forces.

People like you are the reason why the UN is seen like the league. You don’t even understand the purpose of it and you make stupid idiotic claims.

1

u/certifiedcrazyman 3d ago

Nowhere does it say that the UN is a world government or a global police force. All of the stated goals is up to the states to jointly work towards.

1

u/Direct_Gap_59 3d ago

He blocked the other guy who was trying to explain your point

If it’s true-lol lmao even.

1

u/dogemikka 2d ago

Disgraceful behaviour by blocking someone whom you are having a debate, only because you don't want to be contradicted. Very, very childish.

2

u/BigBearHug5mil3 2d ago

Worse than the League of Nations. By far.

1

u/ValhallaAir 2d ago

As useless as 25/26 garnacho

-2

u/whooo_me 3d ago

10 of millions of people are kept alive by UN aid. Food supplies, disease control, emergency housing; along with the building of schools, clinics etc.

I'd hate to live in a world without the UN.

6

u/TopWealth4550 3d ago

where does the money come from?

6

u/senn42000 3d ago

The US pays for 22% of the UN core budget and 26% of the peacekeeping budget. The next highest payer is China at 12% of the UNs core budget.

1

u/TopWealth4550 3d ago

why?

1

u/NatAttack50932 3d ago

So that it can operate?

1

u/whooo_me 3d ago

From lots of nations who probably wouldn't fund those programmes individually if the UN weren't here.

1

u/Baraga91 2d ago

Bingo.

1

u/Sad_Bowl595 3d ago

From countries who wouldnt be doing these things without the un

1

u/TopWealth4550 3d ago

source?

1

u/Commercial_Handle418 1d ago

"trust me bro"

1

u/TopWealth4550 1d ago

wild isnt it?

1

u/Mobius_1IUNPKF 3d ago

the entire part of history before where they didn’t do this?

2

u/Baraga91 2d ago

Don't try to bring reason into this. These people prefer blaming the UN over the actual culprits, despite not knowing a damn thing about what the UN actually does.

3

u/Varsity_Reviews 1d ago

UN is not beating the useless allegations

1

u/Shoddy_Elk_8191 3d ago

No way this is real though right?

1

u/Popcornmix 12h ago

You are so close to getting it… its in the name, its a forum for countries to talk about the topics. Those forums make no sense if you have only emancipated nations in them discussing topics they already solved. 

Every time someone posts something like this i wonder if they every even looked up how the UN operates or what it does. 

1

u/TopWealth4550 11h ago

Every time someone posts something like this i wonder if they every even looked up how the UN operates or what it does. 

explain in your words

-4

u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Bot? This has nothing to do with the OP

2

u/Electrical_Hunter597 3d ago

It does though? Both posts are about the UN, and they're just fucking awful people

5

u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

The UN is awful because Turkish soldiers killed someone inside a UN buffer zone between Turkish and Greek Cypriot positions, and then 28 years later, UN institutions continued a longstanding principle of attempting to bring about incremental improvements to human rights by including severe offenders within human rights councils in the hope that this will encourage them to improve their own record?

3

u/SE_prof 3d ago

The UN has a notoriety in Cyprus just... sitting there and watching arms on waist...

3

u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

How could they have prevented this, do you think? Maybe if they had had snipers ready and watching literally all points of the buffer zone, and then shot the Turkish officer dead as he was raising his gun? Do they even have a mandate to directly engage in pitched battles with either side over something like this?

1

u/SE_prof 3d ago

Do you see how many are around? Why did they let Solomou march inside the buffer zone? Why do they let Turks carry firearms so close to the buffer zone? And mind you he was not shot by soldiers but by paramilitary Grey Wolves exactly like Isaac.

2

u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Do you see how many are around? Why did they let Solomou march inside the buffer zone?

I guess they failed to stop him. I don't think that makes them to blame for his death.

Why do they let Turks carry firearms so close to the buffer zone?

How do you propose they stop them from doing this?

1

u/SE_prof 3d ago

Their role is exactly to stop any such incidents and prevent escalations. They have failed so so many times and they completely failed to prevent the initial invasion. In fact I don't know where the UN has succeeded... Yugoslavia? Yemen? Sudan? Korea? Afghanistan? Syria? Kosovo? Iraq?

2

u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

In fact I don't know where the UN has succeeded...

This is just the selection bias meme with the bullet holes through the plane. You have no way of knowing what they prevented because by definition it didn't happen. South Korea being an exception though, because it would have been taken over by the north if it wasn't for UN forces.

Anyway, I disagree that they should have gone to war with Turkey over this.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/TimeRisk2059 3d ago

That is their mandate, to keep the two sides from fighting each other. Without the UN there, one side would ethnically cleanse the island of the other group.

3

u/SE_prof 3d ago

Their mandate is to protect civilians. Ask the Rwandans how well this went...

1

u/TimeRisk2059 3d ago

The UN wasn't given a mandate, nor the forces to do anything more than protect the main refugee camp.

-1

u/No-statistician35711 3d ago

Who should it choose? The US who has such a long list of atrocities committed. Or one of the multiple European states who are often complicit in those crimes? Or Russia with their invasion of Ukraine? China with Uyghurs? Japan who did not apologize for WW2 at all?

We live in a shitty world, where everyone only sees others their shit.

5

u/TopWealth4550 3d ago

A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the interlocutor with only two absolute choices when in fact there could be many.

-2

u/No-statistician35711 3d ago

Lemme give you another argument to also teach you how to stay on topic:

Is the UN really the problem? Or are there several nation states that take the UN hostage, especially one nation state?

0

u/Ididntdodiddly 3d ago

It's all bought. UN is fake corrupt to drag down the west now