Another Brick in the Wall

    All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
    All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
    Just another blunder
    Just another lousy call
    Just another clap of thunder
    And apologies ring hollow
    From the guilty in Whitehall
    And there’s no hint of sorrow
    Just the whitewash on the wall
    Just one man dead
    And nothing is gained
    Nothing at all
    And Jean Charles de Menezes remains
    Just another brick in the wall

Middle East Eye September 29, 2015 – Turkey to complete Syria border wall within 5 months, official says

A concrete wall being built to stop illegal crossings along the length of Turkey’s 900-km border with Syria will be finished by the end of February, an official at a Turkish state institution with knowledge of the project said on Wednesday.
…
Construction on a border wall to combat smuggling and illegal migration started as early as 2014 even as Turkey maintained an open-border policy that has seen nearly three million Syrians seek refuge in the country.
…
Made up of seven-tonne portable blocks topped with razor wire, the wall will be three meters high and two meters wide. The official said private companies would be hired once construction tenders were completed.

Hurriyet cited the head of TOKI as saying that 200-250 concrete blocks were currently being produced daily at five work sites, and that the latest construction work had begun around 20 days ago.

New watchtowers on roads patrolled by armored vehicles have already been erected along the border this year as part of increased security measures.

Why did this shock me?  It’s not as if reports of other walls recently being built in Europe had completely escaped my notice.  But a vague awareness isn’t the same as seeing the full scope of an issue.

The Independent – August 29. 2015 – Migrant crisis: The walls Europe is building to keep people out

…
Hungary sparked international outrage by building a border fence in central Europe, but travel farther to the edges of Europe and you’ll see that it isn’t alone in this tactic.

Earlier this year, Bulgaria announced its own plan for a border fence that will eventually span 100 miles of its border with southern neighbour Turkey, though Reuters notes that migrants and refugees continue to enter the country at an unprecedented rate. Bulgaria’s wall sits not too far from a wall built by Greece in 2012.
…

The Guardian – November 29, 2015 —Europe’s walls are going back up – it’s like 1989 in reverse

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What we are seeing in 2015 is Europe’s reverse 1989. Remember that the physical demolition of the iron curtain started with the cutting of the barbed wire fence between Hungary and Austria. Now it is Hungary that has led the way in building new fences, and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in stoking prejudice. Europe must keep out Muslim migrants, Orbán said earlier this autumn, “to keep Europe Christian”.
…

Express February 26, 2016 — The Great Wall of Europe: Hungary splits continent in two with huge fence to stop migrants

Reuters – April 4, 2016 – How Europe built fences to keep people out

In 2012, when he was Greek minister of defense, Greece built a fence and electronic surveillance system along its border with Turkey. The cement and barbed-wire barrier and nearly 2,000 extra guards were designed to stop a sharp rise in illegal immigrants.

The 62-year-old former diplomat [Dimitris Avramopoulos] was not directly involved in the project. But in 2013 he defended it, telling a news conference the wall had borne fruit. “The entry of illegal immigrants in Greece by this side has almost been eliminated,” he said.
…
But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built or started 1,200 km (750 miles) of anti-immigrant fencing at a cost of at least 500 million euros ($570 million), a Reuters analysis of public data shows. …

The Local – April 11, 2016 — Walls go up in Europe again: Austria raises ‘migrant fence’

Austria has begun building an anti-migrant barrier across the Brenner pass at the Italian border.
“The structure will be 250 metres long and will cover both the motorway and the main road,” Helmut Tomac, the head of the police in the southern Austrian state of Tyrol was reported by La Stampa as saying.

CNN – September 7, 2016 — UK to build ‘big new wall’ in Calais to stop migrants

How long has this been going on?  Express December 6, 2015 provided a timeline up to that point:

1993
Spain began building a border around its North African territories of Ceuta and Melilla in 1993 to stop illegal immigration and smuggling.

The 20ft barbed fence encircling the enclave is fitted with spotlights, noise and movement sensors, and video cameras.

2011
When the previously noted Greek wall began going up.

2013
Bulgaria – The 15ft high, five foot wide fence, finished in early August [2015],

2014
Turkey begins building its wall on the border with Syria.

June 2015
Hungary

August 2015
Estonia vowed to build a border with Russia in August to boost security and protect the Schengen zone.

September 2015
Slovakia – The country’s interior minister said wire mesh containers and heavy duty fabric liner would be filled with sand, soil or gravel and extended along part of its southern frontier.

Ukraine and Russia – announced at the beginning of September that they would install separate fences along their shared border.

October 2015
a section of Hungary’s border with Croatia was blocked

November 2015
Macedonia is the latest country to erect a border fence.

Austria announced it was to erect a metal fence along its border with Slovenia.

Of course all the modern fortifications don’t begin to compare with the 15th century Great Wall of China.  Nor will they be effective for a couple hundred years before being breached or become tourist attractions a few hundred years after that.