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Berlin Wall 20 years anniversary events in Germany - PHOTOSESSION

Berlin Wall 20 years anniversary events in Germany - <font color=red>PHOTOSESSION</font>

10 November 2009 09:15 (UTC +04:00)

On November 9, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited one of the former check points on borders of East and West Berlin and together with former presidents of USSR and Poland Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa, she crossed symbolic border of East and West Germany and talked with the witnesses of events happened 20 years ago. Merkel thanked Gorbachev and Walesa: â€œI would like to thank you that you made this unity possibleâ€.

Despite the rainy weather, leaders, local residents and foreign guests gathered in the center of Berlin near Brandenburg Gates to celebrate Freedom festivity. Following the concert, Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the people. Clinton called the fall of Berlin Wall as one of the important events of 20th century. She called for joint struggle against the global threats, for protection of democracy and human rights. Medvedev said changes in USSR and other countries in that time conditioned the fall of Berlin Wall, which divided not only one country, but all European peoples as well. "Today we don’t have the USSR and the GDR on the political map of the world, but we have people who have worked and lived in those countries, and those people are now proud to see how they managed to unite the world, how they did their best to overcome barriers, how they managed to reconcile after World War Two, and how to progress together for a better future."

Then former Polish president Lech Walesa pushed over the first stone to demolish symbolic domino wall along the former path of the Berlin Wall and the celebrities were developed with a concert program.
The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 by the German Democratic Republic to prevent emigration of East Germans to the West. It divided the city to two parts encircling the city of West Berlin completely separating it from East Germany. But 100-km wall couldnâ€™t stop the people who tried to escape to the West Germany. Nearly 200 people could escape, nearly 200 were injured and 3000 arrested. The Berlin Wall was demolished in 1989 and some parts of the wall were saved as a monument.

Note: photos from Reuters