The Peace Line

There are still walls which divide people.

Walls built in name of a religion, or of a political state, or to avoid people entering those that we believe being our own territories....

I remember  the 9th of November 1989 so well: the day when it was decided to open the Berlin Wall. After few days I would have been 14: thinking to the past, I am surprise how much this event touched me...I still have the journal article of that day.

Belfast is still divided.

"Peace Lines" were begun to be built at the end of the 60's, when the beginning of the Troubles increased the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, respectively pro and against Northern Ireland independence. The aim was to decrease the violent attacks between the two parts.

In West of Belfast, the "Peace Line" separates the area of Falls Road, where the catholic Republicans mostly live, to the area of Shankill, where the Unionists of protestant religion live.

The walls have gates (sometime controlled by the police) which allow the passage from one to the other side. They are open during daylight but closed at night.

All the murals shown up to now here are Republican and located in the area of Falls Road. I arrived at the Peace line at 6:30 pm.: the gates to pass to the Shankill area were closed...I had to come back almost to the centre of Belfast to make a kind of "U" route for arriving to the other side....

Discussion on the removal of the "Peace Lines" began in 2008, but a study carried out in 2012 by the University of Ulster showed that the majority of the residents believe that the peace walls are still necessary because of potential violence. In May 2013, the Northern Ireland Executive committed to the removal of all peace lines by mutual consent by 2023 (read the news).

More about the "Peace Lines" in Wikipedia.

I HAVE A DREAM

Northumberland Street, Belfast, 2015

"...And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

          Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!..."

Martin Luther King - Washington, 28th of August 1963