Berlin mayor tells Trump: “Don’t build this wall!”
The mayor of Berlin has implored US President Donald Trump not to build a wall along the US-Mexico border because such divides "destroy the lives of millions".
Socialist democrat politician Michael Mueller became the mayor of Berlin in 2014, the year the city commemorated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
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In a statement, Mueller said Berliners could not stand aside while their "historical experiences are tossed aside", and pleaded with Trump: "Mr. President, don't build this wall!"
Mueller said:
We Berliners know best how much suffering was caused by the division of an entire continent with barbed wire and concrete.
Berlin, the city of a divided Europe, the city of a free Europe, cannot stay silent when a country plans to erect a new wall.
The Berlin mayor's statement deliberately referenced a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan thirty years ago. Standing in front of the Berlin wall on June 12, 1987, Reagan told Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "Tear down this wall."
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order to start construction of a wall between the US and Mexico. He said in a tweet that Mexico had "taken advantage of the US for long enough" and that the "very weak border must change, NOW!".
Construction of the Berlin wall started in 1961, and it divided the city for 28 years. Despite the historical significance of the wall, and its current poinance in world politics, half of Germans do not know when it was built.