WORLD'S BARRIERS
Sunday, 8 November 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/world/2009/walls_around_the_world/default.stm
Two decades since the Berlin Wall came down, BBC Mundo looks at walls and barriers around the world which are still standing - or have been put up - since 1989.
WALLS STILL STANDING
West Bank
Northern Ireland
Saudi Arabia
Melilla and Ceuta
Cyprus
Pakistan-Iran
Rio de Janiero
Mexico-US
India-Pakistan
Korean border
Western Sahara
Iraq-Kuwait
Botswana-Zimbabwe
WEST BANK
Israel says the West Bank barrier is essential to protect itself from attack but to the Palestinians, it is an "apartheid wall”.
CONCRETE CONTROVERSY
The barrier which separates Israel from the West Bank is a mixture of fences, barbed wire, ditches and concrete slabs up to 8m (26ft) high.
Some sections also include sensors, sand - to help identify footprints - patrol roads and "buffer zones" up to 60m wide.
[Si c'est au centre du village Palestinien ou d'un champs d'un Palestinien on le rase sur 200 pieds de large.]
The Israeli government approved the construction of the wall in 2002.
According to figures released by the UN in July 2009, the proposed (commentaires: illégales) boundary is now 58.3% complete, with 10% currently in the process of construction, leaving 31.5% still to be built.
The Israeli Ministry of Defence issues emergency military decrees to landowners in order to obtain the land on which the wall is to be built - 85% of it is built on occupied Palestinian land.
Only 15% of the barrier follows the so-called "Green Line", the internationally-recognised border.
In 2004, the barrier was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Israel's official position is that the barrier is a "security fence", defending its citizens from attacks by Palestinians.
[Commentaire du professeur Bulle: Et qu'est-ce qui protège les Palestiniens des attaques des Israéliens? Que ce les soldats ou les «colons» (plus précisément - le professeur Bulle aime la précision: des squatters (ce qui est trop gentil) ou des voleurs. Sans compter des meurtriers!]
The Palestinians, on the other hand, view it as an "apartheid wall" which threatens their human rights, and believe that its true aim is to expand Israeli territory.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Designed as a temporary measure to keep fighting Protestant and Catholic communities apart, many "peace walls" are stills standing.
TROUBLED COMMUNITIES
Northern Ireland's so-called "peace lines" began to appear 40 years ago in Belfast, initially as a temporary measure but they continued to grow.
[Le professeur Bulle ne cesse de le dire: quoi de plus beau que le vocabulaire!]
They are a series of barriers that separate Catholic and Protestant communities varying in size from a few hundred metres, to 5km (3 miles) in length.
Despite the fact that they have now become a tourist attraction, they are testimony to the very recent history of violence between Catholics and Protestants in the UK province of Northern Ireland.
The first of these walls was erected in 1969, following riots and burning houses in the west of Belfast.
Over the years the wall, which separates the Shankill and Falls roads, rose to a height of 6m (19ft).
The last of the walls was built as recently as last year, in the grounds of a primary school in the north of Belfast, following a period in which tensions were escalating between the two communities.
SAUDI ARABIA
The most powerful economy in the Gulf is building one of the longest, most high-tech security fences in the world, at a cost of $300m.
HIGH-TECH FRONTIER
In order to defend the most powerful economy - and biggest oil reserves - of the Persian Gulf, the Saudi Kingdom's 9,000km (5,590 mile) border is currently being reinforced with one of the longest security fences in the world.
The project is being carried out at an estimated cost of $3bn (£1.8bn).
Saudi Arabia shares a border with Yemen which is about 1,500km long, and with Iraq which is 800km long.
The five other adjoining countries are Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Jordan.
The high-tech project is being carried out by the security and defence consortium EADS and Al Rashid Trading & Contracting Co.
It will involve an actual physical barrier in some parts, but the less populated desert areas will have a virtual barrier comprising satellite monitoring, cameras, radar, electronic sensors, coastal detection centres and reconnaissance airships to detect intruders and send patrols.
A security fence is already in place on the Yemeni border, also built by EADS.
CEUTA AND MELILLA
Residents of Spain's north African enclaves live behind towering fences, designed to keep out would-be illegal migrants trying to reach Europe.
EUROPEAN GATEWAY
At the end of the 20th Century, Spain decided to build two barriers in Ceuta and Melilla, to prevent enormous illegal immigration from Africa.
These two autonomous cities, situated on the other side of the straits of Gibraltar in the midst of African territory, represent the easiest access into Europe from Africa.
Erected in the 1990s, the 8.2km (5 miles) of wire fences in Ceuta and 12km in Melilla, have since been modernised.
The surge of illegal immigration into Spain recorded at the start of 2000 led Spanish and European authorities to reinforce security, constructing three parallel fences in each city.
The height of each wall was increased to 6m (19ft), infrared cameras were installed, as well as tear gas canisters, noise and movement sensors and control towers.
A maze of interlocking cables and spikes await anyone who manages to scale the moving ladder-resistant summit of the first fences.
However successful the Spanish authorities have been in controlling immigration, the people of Ceuta and Melilla have had to pay a price, living as they do in a fortified city.
CYPRUS
Built after the 1974 war, the no-man's land between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the island remains under UN control.
DIVIDED ISLAND
The barrier which divides Cyprus in two, separating the Greek Cypriots from the Turkish Cypriots, was established in 1964.
Within a decade, it had become completely impassable, following the 1974 war between the two communities.
Barbed wire extends 180km (111 miles) from Kokkina in the north-west, to Famagusta in the south-west of the island.
The exclusion zone between both communities, referred to as the green line, remains under the control of UN peacekeepers.
This "no-man's land" varies in width from 3m in the centre of the capital city Nicosia, to 7.5km at the village of Athienou.
In 2003, the border was finally reopened. Both communities can now cross over to the other side after almost three decades of separation.
PAKISTAN-IRAN
Baluchistani communities are divided by Iran's barrier on its border with Pakistan, intended to keep out smugglers and migrants.
COMMUNITIES SPLIT
In 2007, Iran began to build a wall on the border with Pakistan, in an area known as Balochistan.
The authorities say the wall, still under construction, is to prevent the spread of illegal activities such as the movement of black market goods, drugs trafficking and illegal immigration.
However, some argue that these are not the only reasons, and that Tehran is also erecting a barrier in an effort to slow the arrival of Islamist extremists.
Although there is no official confirmation of the continued expansion of the wall, press reports from the region suggest that it could eventually reach 700km (435 miles) in length and 3m (9ft) in height.
The Balochistanis, who live on both sides of the border and in the area where both countries neighbour Afghanistan, have had their communities divided by the wall.
RIO DE JANEIRO
Brazil says the walls are to protect the forest from growing shanty towns, but critics say they are an attempt to hem in the city's poor.
'POVERTY BARRIER'
Since the beginning of the year, Rio de Janeiro has been building walls around some of its favelas, the shanty towns that crowd the hills around the city.
[Vocabulaire: Favelas: bidonville = taudis. Le Brésil n'est pas un état social-démocrate.]
In total, 13 favelas will eventually be surrounded by concrete with a total length of 14km (8.6 miles) and a height varying between 80cm (32 inches) and 3m.
The aim is to prevent the precariously-constructed communities spilling over into the forest and destroying the surrounding vegetation of the Tijuca Park, one of the largest urban nature reservations in the world.
Officials say the Atlantic forests in the region have already lost an estimated 90% of their surface area.
In Santa Marta district, 600m of wall has already been erected, while in Rocinha the government has reached an agreement with the 200,000 residents to limit the wall to those areas at risk of landslides.
The rest will be made up of ecological paths and parks.
Some critics think Rio's walls are an attempt to separate the poor areas from the richer ones situated between the favelas and the sea.
Others say they are intended to limit drug trafficking, as part of a planned regional government clamp down.
US-MEXICO
The US spends millions of dollars on a vast fence and surveillance operation along its southern border to try to keep illegal migrants out.
Operation Guardian
The border between Mexico and the United States is 3,200km (1,988 miles) long.
The US government has built a metal wall along a third of it, at an estimated cost so far of $2.5bn (£1.5bn), to prevent the arrival of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
The first barriers actually began to appear in 1991, but in 1994 the US officially decided to step up their surveillance and expanded the wall under Operation Guardian.
According to the Mexican National Commission of Human Rights, more than 5,600 illegal immigrants have died trying to cross the border in the subsequent years.
The majority died as a consequence of the high temperatures in the desert.
As well as the wall itself, there are also three metal fences in some places along the border, preventing any kind of contact at all. Its average height is 4-5m (13-16ft).
Construction of a "virtual wall" has also recently begun.
This comprises a series of technological devices such as infrared sensors, cameras, radar, watch towers and ground sensors.
INDIA-PAKISTAN
The mined and heavily guarded border between India and Pakistan is one of the most volatile frontier regions on the planet.
VOLATILE FRONTIER
The border between India and Pakistan is one of the most volatile on the planet.
Walls, barbed wire fences and barricades stretch almost half the 2,900km (1,800 mile) boundary line.
Delhi has said it intends to extend the barrier along almost the whole border.
At the end of the 1980s, India began erecting barriers in the states of Punjab and Rajastan, saying they needed to combat terrorism.
An additional cause of tension is the use of barbed wire fences combined with mines and other high-tech devices along almost all of the so-called "Line of Control", the de facto border between Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
KOREAN BORDER
The heavily guarded "De-militarized Zone" (DMZ) between North and South Korea remains a symbol of Cold War on the peninsula.
COLD WAR REMNANT
A strip of territory 4km (2.5 miles) wide by 250km long divides North and South Korea.
It cuts the peninsula down the middle, roughly through the "38th Parallel".
The zone was created in 1953, when the war between the two Koreas, in which three million people died, ended in a ceasefire.
[Précision: la guerre qui fut menée principalement par les USA (Otan) (avec participation du Canada) eut pour résultat que la majorité des victimes furent de Coréens du Nord. Leur portion de pays fut dévastée. Il n'y restait rien debout. Et pas une plante. Qu'ils soient un peu parano depuis est tout à fait normal. On se demandera si on s'en fout: mais alors pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas une seule Corée (Sud) puisque dans une guerre, lorsque tous les ennemis sont morts, les survivants gagnent. Résulat du test: la Corée du Nord était appuyée par la Chine et la Russie. La Chine avait une provision de soldats illimitées. Et si on ne voulait pas une nouvelle guerre mondiale avec une puissance atomique - Russie- valait mieux se calmer. Maintenant, ayant compris la leçon, la Chine est devenue une puissance nucléaire. La Corée aussi. Sinon, on ne serait jamais aussi poli avec son dictateur actuel. Et ayant vu ce qui est arrivé à son voisin l'Irak, l'Iran veut sa bombe aussi. Et quoiqu'on dise au sujet de l'illégalité de la chose (choses dites par des puissances nucléaires qui se sont armées sans le demander à personne - y compris Israël qui nie encore et interdit toute visite des inspecteurs. De grandes émotions en perspective.]
For many years it was considered to be one of the most acute fault lines of the Cold War.
Even now, despite moves towards reconciliation between the two countries, it remains a symbol of the latent tension in the peninsula.
WESTERN SAHARA
Morocco's wall of sand in the Sahara desert is an attempt to keep out the Sahrwari people, who also claim the territory as their own.
DESERT SANDS
The Sahrawi and Moroccans who inhabit the Western Sahara have been disputing the rightful ownership of the land since Spain ended its occupation of the area and withdrew in 1976.
In 1980, having attained the land for themselves, the Moroccans began building a wall in the desert.
It said the wall was to defend itself from the Polisario Front - a political and military movement which seeks independence from Morocco and autonomy for the Sahrawi people.
The wall, completed in 1987 is in reality a collection of six different defence walls.
Its total span is more than 2,700km (1,677 miles), and is made up of a mixture of sand and stone, barbed wire, ditches and mine fields.
Human rights organisations refer to it as the "wall of shame" and condemn the use of anti-personnel landmines along its length.
The Moroccan government, for its part, says that it has cleared the desert of mines and deactivated 65,000 of them.
BOTSWANA-ZIMBABWE
Botswana's hopes the extensive fence will protect its valuable livestock from disease, but Zimbabwe says its real purpose is to keep people out.
DISEASE BARRIER
The wall which separates Botswana and Zimbabwe has been compared to that which surrounds the West Bank, but has more to do with sanitation than geopolitics.
The barbed wire fence is 2m (6ft) high and spans some 500km (310 miles).
In 2003, the government of Botswana announced plans to build an electric fence along the border with Zimbabwe to stop the spread of foot and mouth disease among livestock.
Thousands of cattle have been slaughtered in Botswana over the last few years because of successive waves of the disease.
This loss is particularly significant in a country where cattle farming is the second largest source of income after diamond mining.
However, the Zimbabwean authorities, say the fence is to prevent Zimbabweans from crossing illegally into Botswana.
The Zimbabwean economy has been in freefall - hyperinflation has reached as much as 100,000% at times and the unemployment rate is more than 90%.
[Une minute de silence!]
As a consequence, many Zimbabweans have tried to emigrate to Botswana, one of the wealthiest economies on the continent alongside South Africa.
The electric fence has never actually been turned on. There are no patrols monitoring how effective the barriers are.
For the moment the wall does not appear to be an insurmountable barrier.
Various rivers cross its width, creating gaps through which herds can easily cross the border.
Il y a 7 ans
