Soccer Dad

Great moments in apartheid fences

In Belfast:

Belfast Lord Mayor, Councillor Martin Morgan, from the moderate, pro-peace Catholic SDLP party, explains that the fences were originally intended as temporary stopgap measures. "Like many other things," he says, they became permanent fixtures.

"All the walls we built were there for a short period of time," he says, but "some of them are [now] 30 years old, and there is no sign that they will ever come down."

Morgan, 36, a social worker by training, was born and raised in Belfast, and knows the city's strife-torn sections like the back of his hand.

The separation fences, some of which tower 12 meters in height, carry the Orwellian name "Peace Line." The British decided that they are a worthy security item. As years passed by, most of the walls were raised at such heights to ensure that young people can't use them as platforms to throw Molotov cocktails.

Between Saudi Arabia and Yemen:

The Marebpress website reported a Yemeni military source as saying that Yemeni border guards tried to stop Saudis from building the new wall. In response, the Saudis mobilized their military and threatened force if they were unable to start construction of the barriers. According to the same source, construction halted last Sunday but the Saudis resumed work on Monday. So far they have built deep tunnels and concrete arches and have laid barbed wire along the frontiers to the south of the Saudi towns of Towal, Masfaq, and Khawjarah.

The military source said that the Saudis informed them that the new barriers are necessary for protecting their borders against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons.

And now, in Brazil (h/t the now retired Pillage Idiot).

Construction has begun in two favelas, or shantytowns, in the southern districts of Rio de Janeiro, a government spokeswoman told Reuters. One of the two is Morro Dona Marta, which police occupied in November to control crime and violence caused mostly by rival drug gangs.

Officials say the wall is to protect the remaining native forest but critics fear the move could be seen as discriminatory and become a blemish symbolizing Brazil's deep divisions between rich and poor.

They might be criticized, but none of them are called "Apartheid" walls.