European leaders gathered yesterday in Budapest to mark the 20th anniversary of the symbolic fall of the Iron Curtain, often described as the first crack in the Berlin Wall and one of the key episodes leading to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.
The presidents of Germany, Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Switzerland, as well as high-ranking officials from Poland, Britain and more than 20 other countries were to participate in a commemorative session at the Hungarian parliament and a gala event at the Hungarian State Opera House.
On June 27, 1989, the then-foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through some barbed wire on the border between the two countries, putting a symbolic end to a physical and psychological boundary of which by then there was little left.
PHOTO: AP
Hungary had begun to dismantle the Iron Curtain nearly two months earlier — partly because border guards said it was in such poor condition that even small animals were setting off false alarms along the electrified fence.
With most of it already gone, officials had trouble finding even a small section of the Iron Curtain for Horn and Mock’s staged photo opportunity with wire cutters.
“What happened at the end of June was a nice symbolic gesture ... but the border continued to be strictly controlled,” Swiss-Hungarian journalist and historian Andreas Oplatka said on state radio.
Pictures of the event were published around the world and inspired thousands of East Germans to leave their country, find temporary refuge in Hungary, Poland or Czechoslovakia and wait for an opportunity to travel to West Germany.
By the end of the summer, thousands of East German “tourists” were living in tents on the grounds of the West German embassy in Budapest and in several other locations around the city, including church yards and the site of a communist youth camp.
After allowing some of the “Ossies” to leave for West Germany via Austria in August and then some more a few weeks later, Hungary finally decided to let all East Germans out from Sept. 11, 1989.
Within two months, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany’s reunification was formalized in October 1990.
“The peaceful turn of events of the year 1989 was the great triumph of the citizens of the former Eastern Bloc states,” Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said on Friday during a memorial event near the border with Hungary. “Today, watchtowers and barbed wire are a part of the past. The ‘peace project Europe’ has prevailed with much success.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS