GERMANY: Berlin Wall construction anniversary

As Germany marked the anniversary of the construction of the Berlin wall on Monday (August 13), a recently unearthed document has provided new evidence of written orders to East German soldiers to shoot would-be escapers to the West. The discovery has fuelled debate about who was to blame for hundreds of deaths at the former border. Written in October 1973, the document details an order for Stasi operatives infiltrated into border guard units to help prevent soldiers escaping to West Germany. The order said: "Don't shy away from using your weapon, even if the breach of the border involves women and children, which is a tactic often used by the traitors." "The document is not entirely new but in my view, it's appropriate that there is another uproar across the country," said Guenther Nooke, a human rights delegate with the German government. "Quite obviously, it is not self-evident to many people that the East German system gave out orders that women and children should be shot. People were asked to kill, to murder. I think it's only positive that a lot of people in Germany and the world are shocked one more time -- or for the first time," Nooke said. He was speaking during a memorial service to the hundreds of people killed trying to flee from East to West Germany between 1961 and 1989. Trials of former border guards who fired at escapees and the officials who ordered the shoot-to-kill policy have generated huge controversy since German unification in 1990. Many of the accused argued that their actions at the time did not constitute offences under East German law and accused the Western-dominated courts of practising "victors' justice". "It goes back a long time now but I experienced everything myself," said Gerda Hubel, who witnessed the construction of the wall. "People jumped out of windows and a lot of people died after being shot. We had to live with it." The total number of people killed while trying to cross the border is uncertain. Berlin prosecutors count 270 deaths through shooting or mines along the whole of the border between East and West Germany, including the Berlin Wall, up to 1989. A separate government study from 2000, estimated the number killed at Other estimates run as high as 1,000 deaths.

ITN Source | August 13, 2007

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