Week of November 12, 2009, Issue #734
FRONT
Vuepoint: Brick by brick
Scott Harris / scott@vueweekly.com
It goes without saying that the fall of the Berlin Wall on the chaotic and celebration-filled night of November 9, 1989, was one of the most iconic moments of the 20th century. Like many others, I have vivid memories of watching the images of joyous Berliners standing atop the wall or battering it with hammers to the point of exhaustion in an attempt to wipe its very existence from the city.
More than simply a physical scar through a divided city, the wall was a potent and all-too-real symbol of totalitarianism and illegitimate control, and its fall was heralded as a promise of a more open and democratic world, where walls designed to divide or hem people in would increasingly be torn down through the spread of western democracy. (That the spread of western corporate interests was an even more important outcome was, of course, less often mentioned in those heady days of end-of-the-Cold War enthusiasm.)
With such high-minded promise, then, as Berlin and the world mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's worth considering just some of the many other walls which are still standing or being expanded, the existence of which are devastating lives every bit as much as the wall in Berlin once did.
The 700-kilometre-long separation wall which Israel began constructing in 2002 is now almost two-thirds complete, a full 85 percent of it built on confiscated land in illegally occupied Palestine, cutting Palestinians off from their agricultural land, water, places of worship and from one another. Despite being ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, construction continues unabated.
The Berm, a 2700-kilometre long wall of sand, barbed wire and landmines built by the Moroccans who occupy Western Sahara as a means to thwart both the Saharawi liberation movement and the return of refugees continues to claim lives 29 years after construction was started, a potent symbol of broken promises.
And in some of the very western democracies which celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall—from the 3200-kilometre wall being built by the United States on its southern border to the Spanish razor wire-enclosed enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla—walls are being erected to keep economic refugees from the global south from fleeing the impacts of the neoliberal policies promoted by the West and sped in part by the fall of the wall. There is still clearly much work to be done if we are to fulfil the promise of 20 years ago this week. V
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