WALLS
60 minutes, 2004
Ref: 084tvc

In an increasingly globalised world, walls are still being built to keep people apart. We have a one-hour special on the walls that have sprung up around the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We visited Mexico, the United States, Morroco, Berlin, Palestine and Israel to see how the lives of the people living there have been affected-often tragically-by the building of walls to separate people. Some even choose to risk their lives in desperate attempts to cross these fences and reach what they believe is the land of milk and honey. This programme coincides with a number of other events which have left a lasting mark on history: 15 years ago - fall of the Berlin Wall, 10 years ago - construction of the security fence along the United States border with Mexico 10 years ago - death of the first immigrant who tried to cross the Strait of Gibraltar from Africa to Spain 4 years ago - start of the second Intifada in Palestine, which led to the building of the separation wall in Israel.

THE BERLIN WALL - A SYMBOL The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized the start of a new post-Cold War era. The Wall was built in 1961 to keep East Germans from fleeing to the West, though the official line was to protect the country from the capitalist menace. A former Stasi official, who helped set out the lines that would divide Berlin, and a border guard given shoot-on-sight orders to stop anyone trying to escape are interviewed in the report. Victims are also interviewed: the brother of the first young man shot dead while trying to scale the wall and the mother of the last one, a young 20-year old, gunned down just a few months before the fall of the wall.

THE US-MEXICO BORDER FENCE In 1994, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States erected a border fence between Mexico and the US at Tijuana. The aim of the double steel wall, equipped with motion and heat sensors, infrared cameras and a heavily-armed Border Patrol, is to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States. The immediate consequences of what is known as Operation Gatekeeper were the deaths of over 3,000 people, who desperately tried to enter the country illegally by crossing dangerous terrain like mountains and deserts. Since the 9/11 terrorist attack, Operation Gatekeeper has become part of the fight against terrorism. Today the Border Patrol's main goal is to keep terrorists out of the country. To do so they often raid U.S. cities and anyone caught in the country illegally or who has committed a crime is immediately deported. "Walls" looks at the lives of some of those who try to cross and others who have made it, for example, a Mexican family in Los Angeles who own a laundry and have been legal US residents for 18 years, but who were recently deported because their papers weren't in perfect order.

CEUTA A few years after the security fence was built in Tijuana, a double border fence was put up in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco. It was financed by the European Union. This fence reinforces the natural border between Europe and Africa, the Strait of Gibraltar. It encircles the entire city and is patrolled by police and soldiers to keep out illegal immigrants. The report looks at how the fence has changed the lives of the citizens of Ceuta and their Moroccan neighbors, many of whom make a living from trade with Ceuta. But most Africans attempt to reach Europe illegally by boat or as stowaways on freight trucks. The report talks to the immediate families of some of those who have died while trying to reach Spain and to members of a Moroccan NGO that tries to make people aware of the dangers involved in illegal immigration.

THE ETERNAL CONFLICT Finally, the most recent separation wall to go up is in Israel. After the start of the second Intifada, a couple of years ago the Israeli government used terrorism as an excuse to build a wall that is hundreds of kilometers long and that isolates Palestinians from the territories occupied by their relatives and neighbors and, in many cases, from their livelihoods. The documentary reflects the opinions of those who built the wall and shows the hardships faced by those whose homes will be or have been destroyed because they are in the way, children who are terrified as they cross the towering wall to go to school, families forced to open their homes to soldiers, villages cut off by the wall, etc.