Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was bathed in the national flag of Pakistan on Saturday to offer a towering tribute to a landmark in the country’s history.
The world’s tallest building was illuminated in green and white in honour of Pakistan’s 75th Independence Day.
Earlier in the day, the Pakistani flag was raised at the country’s embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate general in Dubai to mark the occasion.
Officials in both emirates made speeches to celebrate Pakistan’s foundation as a sovereign nation on August 14, 1947.
More than a million Pakistani citizens call the UAE their home, and the emirates has the world’s second-largest Pakistani resident population, behind Saudi Arabia.
President Sheikh Khalifa sent a message of congratulations to President Arif Alvi of Pakistan on his country’s Independence Day.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, echoed these sentiments in similar messages of support.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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