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Fence a painful divider for villagers

By Yuras Karmanau ASSOCIATED PRESS | Monday, July 7, 2008

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PYATSKUNY, Belarus | When Stanislava Subach wants to lay flowers on her husband's grave, she puts them into a plastic shopping bag and adds some stones for weight.

She then tosses the package over a metal fence into what is now another country, and the flowers are to be picked up by former neighbors and placed on the grave.

The border between Belarus and Lithuania, two countries that were part of the Soviet Union, was once little more than a line on a map.

Now a fence runs along the border, representing a new version of the Iron Curtain that separated Eastern and Western Europe until communist rule collapsed. The autocratic regime of Belarus portrays this heavily policed border as the last line of defense against an encroaching West, represented by Lithuania, now a member of the European Union and NATO.

Here the fence cuts right through the village, separating Pyatskuny on the Belarusian side from its Lithuanian half, Norviliskes. Villagers are cut off from neighbors, the parish church and the cemetery, just a few steps but a whole world away.

People living across the fence can travel visa-free throughout Europe and work there. Those who stay in Norviliskes are paid by the European Union to farm their land, and have money to renovate their homes and buy new clothes.

Those on the Belarusian side have little choice but to work on the local collective farm, and they depend on their gardens for food.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who permits little real economic or political reform, uses the fortified border much as the Soviet bloc once did: as a way to keep people in as much as keep them out.

The Lithuanian border police operate as any in Europe: guarding the border with patrol cars and video cameras, chiefly to catch smugglers and illegal immigrants. On the Belarusian side, armed guards patrol with dogs and are authorized to shoot, though they never have. Anyone trying to climb over the fence can be imprisoned for up to two years.

Villagers cannot even walk to the fence to talk with neighbors or pass parcels. Just leaving a footprint in the 10-foot-wide raked dirt track along the fence can mean a fine or 10 days in jail.