Wall Anniversary Brings Disorders

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 15

Wall Anniversary Brings Disorders

(N.Z JP. A.-Reuter—Copyright) BERLIN, August 14. Police restored order in West Berlin about midnight after a hectic day of demonstrations and incidents marking the first anniversary of the border wall. Political police are investigating whether Communists instigated yesterday’s incidents, which included two exchanges of tear gas by East and West Berlin police.

West Berliners stoned East German border guards, and West Berlin police made a truncheon charge on demonstrators. mainly youths, in Bemauerstrasse in the French sector. Crowds estimated at about 1000 in Bernauerstressc chanted "The wall must go." ■while cars circled around, their horns blaring a message of sympathy to East Berliners. Later last night. East Berlin police threw five tear-gas grenades out of a window of a border house at Wiesenstrasse, also in the French sector, at a shouting crowd of hundreds. Police had earlier exchanged ' tear-gas in Bernauerstrasse, where a column of about 1000 marchers was prevented by West Berlin police from joining other demonstrators and headed back to its starting point in the American sector. On the Eastern side of the wall, truckloads of People's Police were rushed up to disperse crowds gathering to watch the demonstration. The Associated Press said demonstrators attacked Russian vehicles stuck in the Western sector. They smashed the front window of a Soviet bus returning soldiers from duty on the Russian war memorial in West Berlin. Other Russian vehicles were surrounded, booed and spat on earlier in the day. A British spokesman said early today that there had been no trouble in the British sector, Reuter reported.

The East German Deputy Fn-eign Minister, Mr Otto Winzer, said in a broadcast yesterday that the "security measures," including the w’all, were an important step

'•il the way to a German peace treaty The Western Governments had realised since these security measures were taken that the treaty and a West

Berlin settlement could not be prevented The West German President 'Dr. Heinrich Luetoke* appealed to the Soviet Union to reconsider its attitude to the East German regime, Reuter said. In a nation-wide television speech President Luebke. who spent the day in Berlin, said the wall had become "a symbol of tyranny for the whole world.” Pressure on the East German population had become “so hard” that people were risking their lives to escape to the West. In Minneapolis, the American Secretary of State (Mr Rusk* said that the Communist wall in Berlin was a monument to the failure of a

competitive coexistence that dared not compete. He said that a sense of national pride and desire tor national independence, yearnings for more freedom for the individual himself, and the desire for higher standards of living and security for family and home have forced changes in the monolithic structure of the Communist system

'These changes, in turn, have produced sharp differences within the bloc itself—differences of doctrine, organisation. tactics and priorities." he said. “Successful societies do not have to build walls and string barbed wire against their own 'people.” he said.