>FIVE NEW BORDER WALLS
INDIA-BANGLADESH
It’s been called the “world’s longest — and bloodiest — barbed wire fence,” and it’s just one of two such barriers India has erected between itself and its neighbours. When it’s finished, the security fence between India and Bangladesh will extend across most of the 4,000-kilometre border that divides the two South Asian countries. (India has already built a fence along its troubled border with Pakistan.) The India-Bangladesh barrier is aimed at mitigating a variety of cross-border problems, including smuggling, arms trafficking and refugees. Officially, there are deemed to be about 2 million undocumented Bengalis in India, but estimates in the Indian news media run as high as 20 million. They are viewed by Indians much as Americans tend to view migrant workers from Mexico, as an imported lumpenproletariat, a convenient scapegoat for a multitude of real or imagined sins and an essential source of extremely cheap labour. Each year, the trigger-happy agents of India’s Border Security Force shoot and kill about 200 Bengalis as they try to cross the border.
ISRAEL-WEST BANK
To most Jewish Israelis, it’s known as the “security barrier” — a life-saving structure that has deterred an untold number of would-be Palestinian “terrorists” since construction began in 2003, thereby preserving countless Israeli lives. To most Palestinians, however, it’s the “apartheid wall” — a blot on the face of humanity, a source of untold frustration and another Israeli land grab. Which of these views you prefer will tend to vary according to whose side you’re on. For Israeli defenders of the wall, the bottom line is a straightforward matter of statistics, which show that cross-border attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers or other bloody-minded zealots have fallen dramatically since construction of the wall began. Others say this is mostly an accident of circumstance. The violent Second Intifada or uprising that began in 2000 was already winding down when the wall began to go up, they say. According to this view, the wall didn’t stop the violence. The Palestinians did — mostly. Which of these views you prefer will tend to vary . . . (see above). About the wall, there is at least one enduring misconception. When many people around the world think of the Israeli wall, they likely envision an array of grim concrete slabs, often defaced with graffiti, plowing across the Middle Eastern landscape. In fact, that image is true for only about 3 per cent of the structure’s total span (running to 700 kilometres when it’s done). For the remaining 97 per cent of its length, the barrier is composed of electronically monitored wire fence — still an obstacle, and possibly a land grab, but not quite the wall that most people imagine. CEUTA AND MELILLA
These two ancient Spanish cities — both located on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco — serve as a source of territorial tension between Madrid and Rabat, as well as being significant illegal entry points for impoverished Afri- cans desperately trying to make their way into Europe. As you might expect, they are both bordered on roughly three sides by fences. (On the fourth side, they about the Mediterranean Sea.) Founded in 1497, Melilla is now outlined by an 11-kilometre fence, while Ceuta, established in 1580, has 8.2 kilometres offencing on its perimeter. Africans bent on entering either of the Spanish territories face three principal options: swim, hide in auto mobiles or storm the fences in large numbers, trying to knock the structures down. Sometimes, the storm-the-fences ap- proach works pretty well. About 100 people managed to make their way into Melilla by these means this past September. One way or another, nearly 3,000 illegal migrants managed to enter one or the two cities last year, a somewhat smaller number than the year before.
GREECE-TURKEY
Begun in 2012, the four-metre-high fence extends for 10 kilometres along the border between Greece and Turkey. Although Greece is undergoing severe economic problems of its own, it still attracts thousands of Turks each year, all intent on using the neighbouring country as a stepping stone on their way to other parts of Europe. According to initial plans, the fence was to be topped by razor wire and was to cost about $4.25 million.
AUSTRALIA
When it comes to virtual walls, no country in the world has erected more formidable barriers than Australia has recently done. According to Danish immigration expert Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Canberra in 2010 had already declared “more than 3,000 islands, certain coastal ports and northern coastal stretches as well as its territorial waters” to be not parts of Australian territory for immigration purposes. In other words, even if a would-be refugee managed to reach one of those areas, he or she would still be denied the right to make a claim of asylum because, technically, they were not in “Australia.” Instead, they would swiftly be strong-armed away to offshore detention facilities in the minuscule Pacific island-nation of Nauru or in Papua New Guinea.