Mumbai's Art Deco buildings get World Heritage tag

Agencies
June 30, 2018

Mumbai, Jun 30: Mumbai's Art Deco buildings, believed to be the world's second-largest collection after Miami, were added on Saturday to UNESCO's World Heritage List alongside the city's better-known Victorian Gothic architecture.

The decision was approved at a UNESCO meeting in the Bahraini capital Manama.

A not-for-profit team of enthusiasts are in the process of documenting every single one of Mumbai's Art Deco treasures but they estimate there may be more than 200 across India's bustling financial capital.

The majority of them, built on reclaimed land between the early 1930s and early 1950s, are clustered together in the south of the coastal city where they stand in stark contrast to Victorian Gothic structures.

The two vastly different architectural traditions face off against each other across the popular Oval Maidan playing field, where enthusiastic young cricketers hone their skills.

On one side lie imposing and rather austere 19th-century buildings housing the Bombay High Court and Mumbai University, with their spires and lancet windows.

On the other side stand sleeker buildings boasting curved corners, balconies, vertical lines and exotic motifs.

They were built by wealthy Indians who sent their architects to Europe to come up with modern designs different from those of their colonial rulers.

"Mumbai's Art Deco buildings have always lived in the shadow of the Victorian Gothic structures built by the British but this recognition by UNESCO today helps elevate Art Deco to its rightful place," Atul Kumar, the founder of Art Deco Mumbai said.

"Across a 22-acre stretch of playing field, we have two distinct architectural styles. One symbolic of India's colonisers. The other representing the aspirations of a new, wealthy Indian class."

Mumbai's Art Deco buildings house residential properties, commercial offices, hospitals and single-screen movie theatres, including the popular Regal and Eros cinemas.

Their characteristics include elegant Deco fonts, marble floors and spiral staircases.

Most of the Art Deco buildings, including along the three-kilometre-long palm-fringed Marine Drive promenade, are five storeys high and painted in bright colours such as yellow, pink and blue.

Some of Mumbai's most recognisable buildings are built in the Victorian Gothic style, including the city's famous main train station, which used to be known as Victoria Terminus.

The Bombay High Court, Mumbai University and the headquarters of the city's civic authority are other examples of that style.

They were built in the 19th century as Britain strengthened its hold over India. Many of the edifices boast tinted windows, flying buttresses and ornately carved figures.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 14,2024

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The UN special rapporteur for Palestine has slammed Israel’s parliament for passing a law authorizing the detention of Palestinian children, who are “tormented often beyond the breaking point” in Israeli custody.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in a Thursday post on X, characterized the experiences of Palestinian minors in Israeli detention as extreme and often inhumane.

The UN expert highlighted the grave impact of this policy, noting that up to 700 Palestinian minors are taken into custody each year, a practice she described as part of an unlawful occupation that views these children as potential threats.

Albanese said Palestinian minors in Israeli custody are “tormented often beyond the breaking point” and that “generations of Palestinians will carry the scars and trauma from the Israeli mass incarceration system.”

She further criticized the international community for its inaction, suggesting that ongoing diplomatic efforts, which often rely on the idea of resuming negotiations for peace, have contributed to normalizing such human rights violations against Palestinian children and the broader population.

The comments by Albanese came in response to Israel’s parliament (Knesset) passing a law on November 7 that authorizes the detention of Palestinian children under the age of 14 for “terrorism or terrorist activities.”

Under the legislation, a temporary five-year measure, once the individuals turn 14, they will be transferred to adult prison to continue serving their sentences.

Additionally, the law allows for a three-year clause that enables courts to incarcerate minors in adult prisons for up to 10 days if they are considered dangerous. Courts have the authority to extend this duration if necessary, according to the Knesset.

The legislation underscores a shift in the treatment of minors and raises alarms among human rights advocates regarding the legal and ethical ramifications of detaining children and the conditions under which they may be held.

Thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, are currently in Israeli jails—around one-third without charge or trial. Also, an unknown number are arbitrarily held following a wave of arrests in the wake of the regime's genocidal war on Gaza.

Since the onset of the Gaza war, the Israeli regime, under the supervision of extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has turned prisons and detention centers into “death chambers,” the ministry of detainees and ex-detainees’ affairs in Gaza says.

Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation, and other forms of abuse of Palestinian prisoners have been normalized across Israel’s jail system, reports indicate.

Over 270 Palestinian minors are being detained by Israeli authorities, in violation of UN resolutions and international treaties that forbid the incarceration of children, as reported by Palestinian rights organizations.

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News Network
November 19,2024

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