Walls and Peace

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2017

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From internal barriers to border fences, do walls built for political purposes create bigger problems than they solve? And what is it like to live next to them, asks Cathy Gormley-Heenan, of Ulster University. She meets residents and experts in Belfast, Israel-West Bank, and on the US-Mexican border, to find out why we are still building walls and what impact they have.

Transcript

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0:00.0	2,000 years after the Great Wall of China, there's been a global proliferation of walls and barriers.
0:10.0	We have a concertina wire which goes on top of the secondary fence in rolls.
0:15.0	Maybe six meter fence.
0:17.4	It has spike railings at the top so nobody can climb over.
0:21.0	It's not just a barbed wire fence and ditches and patrol paths.
0:26.0	These are sensor fused border protection elements.
0:30.3	Six meters if you climb it, Some people can jump. Nine meters nobody jumps.
0:36.0	Walls dividing people and countries. They're quick to construct.
0:41.0	We're building the wall.
0:42.0	Fact is going to start soon. Way ahead of
0:45.8	schedule. Way ahead of schedule. But they're not so easy to remove.
0:51.0	I'm Kathy Gormley Heenin.
0:55.8	I'm an academic from Belfast in Northern Ireland where I've studied walls purposely built
1:00.4	to separate and segregate people and neighborhoods. And here they've remained
1:05.3	in place for a lot longer than originally planned. We have now decided that the
1:11.0	Army will erect and man a firm peace line to be sighted between the Divis Street area and the Shankill Road.
1:21.0	The Major said the wall or peace line would be down by Christmas, but that was Christmas of 1969, almost 50 years ago.
1:29.0	Why do governments still choose to build barriers, knowing that it can be difficult to subsequently remove them?
1:36.0	What do they do to people and do they work?
1:40.0	Welcome to Walls and Peace, here on the BBC World Service.
1:44.4	Over the next hour I'll be meeting locals who are affected by the walls in Belfast, Israel,
1:49.7	the occupied West Bank, the US and Mexico.
	...

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