Al-Jazeera People and Power - Germany's Records of Repression 2011

Fifty years after the Berlin Wall was erected, the spectre of the Stasi continues to loom over Germany. How the search for justice by victims of Germany's Stasi repression is inspiring survivors of the Middle East's overthrown dictatorships.

On August 13, 1961, 50 years ago this month, the Berlin Wall went up in Germany. This barrier divided a country, segregated families and separated friends, and its existence would cast a pall over the country.

As a stark symbol of the Cold War, the wall existed in an era of fear, secrecy and heightened political tension, and those that lived in its shadow would know the painful repercussions of its hardliner policies. For what followed in the years of a divided Germany was a surveillance culture brought on by one of the largest and most feared secret service organisations in the world - the Stasi.

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