Barbed Wire

Palestine 2016 Access to water is a human right.

Luxemburg commemorated 70 years after 1945 with a stamp saying "Luxemburg remembers the terror". (Artist C. Goetz)



(Hi Tants, Your Palestinian stamps say it all, amazingly expressive.)

In 1989 India commemorated the life of the civil rights activist Shaheed Laxman Nayak (1899-1943). He campaigned for basic civil rights in the 1930s and early 40s but was imprisoned and executed in 1943.

Nethryk posted information on the French stamp commemorating the return of WW2 deportees on page 4. I recently found a FDC to go with it. Note the delicate flower at the bottom.

The Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas has not been used by human beings for about half a century. The ecosystems along the zone, approximately 250 km long and 4 km wide, are extremely varied. Nature, represented on these two stamps by a songbird and a spoonbill, has been able to thrive and numerous endangered species have been sighted. Land mines remain a danger.

The Solidarity Committee of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) was an anti-imperialist organization. It coordinated action undertaken by the social organizations, public institutions, and the people of the GDR to extend solidarity assistance to the peoples fighting against imperialism, colonialism, racism and apartheid. Yet for decades no fist was able to break through the barbed wire separating east and west Germany (photo); the GDR was in effect a colony of the USSR.

Prisoners' Day has been commemorated annually since 1974. On April 17th Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian people, and the world mark the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners. Maysara Abu Hamdiya (1948-2013) was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Palestinian Authority issued a stamp with a Peace Dove in 2014 calling attention to prisoners incarcerated by Israel (approximately 7,000, including children). Prisoner's Day is on the 17th of April.

A bird trapped in a circle of barbed wire is shown on the stamp issued by Bulgaria in 1981 during the campaign against racism. There is a grim face in the center of the design.

St Pierre & Miquelon (SP&M) 2016 Centennial of the Battle of Somme (World War I).

Rose growing up from barbed wire, designed by Lynda Warner, printed by lithography, and issued by Australia on October 22, 1998 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Scott No. 1712.

- nethryk

Frederick Douglass has been honored on two American stamps, 1967 and 1995. Mozambique suffered under the slave trade and commemorated Douglass, himself born into slavery, in 2012 for his ceaseless work toward the abolition of slavery and achieving basic human rights for all.

From Republic of Korea (South Korea):




Designed - Kim Soe-Jong
Issued 2 July 2001
(part of Millennium series - 11th issue)
depicts two brothers who fought on opposite sides during the Korean War.

Info on the concentration camp Struthof-Natzweiler in the Alsacian region of France has been posted earlier. The stamp shows the memorial designed by Bertrand Monnet and Lucien Fenaux (40 meters high in the shape of an open flame).

Part of the building complex at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg used to be a fort and later a prison; among others Gandhi and Mandela spent time there. It was closed in 1983 and is now a museum next to the modern Constitutional Court building.


(I found the scan of this stamp, 2010, on the web. Does anyone have one?)