Protesters Topple Colonialist Monuments in England and Belgium as Black Lives Matter Demonstrations Spread Across Europe

As Black Lives Matter
demonstrations swell outside of the United States, protesters in
Bristol toppled a statue commemorating a slave trader this past
weekend and, in Belgium, defaced monuments to King Leopold II.
In solidarity with the
anti-racist marches following the brutal police killing of George
Floyd, many Europeans are calling for a reckoning of their own
countries’ racist histories.

Dramatic footage of the dunking
of the slave trader monument into Bristol harbor on Sunday has
circulated widely on social media. Before rolling
the statue into the water, demonstrators pulled it down with ropes
and knelt symbolically on its neck, recalling the way in which
Floyd was killed.

The statue, which celebrates the
philanthropy of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston had
been in the city center since 1895, but was a point of contention
for years. A plaque
identified Colston as “one of the most virtuous and wise sons” of
the city, but neglected to note that his wealth was built in part
from the Royal African Company, whose ships transported some 84,000
slaves from Africa to the Americas between 1672 and
1689.

Over the years several “protest
plaques” contextualizing Colston’s role in the slave trade were
removed by Bristol City Council. In 2018,
council said it would add its
own second plaque to correct the record, but officials opposed the
wording and the plans were eventually
abandoned in 2019. In the wake of Floyd’s killing a petition demanding the
removal of the bronze statue garnered more than 11,000
signatures.

Bristol’s mayor, Marvin Rees,
who is himself of Caribbean descent and was the the first mayor of
black African heritage elected in a major European city, tells
the BBC that he does not feel any real sense of loss
over the statue. “I
can’t and won’t pretend the statue of a slave trader in a city I
was born and grew up in wasn’t an affront to me and people like
me,” Rees said, stressing however that he cannot condone
criminal damage to public property.

“That statue is now under water,
which is a piece of historical irony because undoubtedly people
would’ve been thrown off the sides of the ships during that journey
and there would be many African bodies on the bottom of the water,”
the mayor said. He added
that the statue will probably be recovered from the harbor “at some
point” and that it was likely to end up in a city museum. Some are
already calling for the statue to be replaced by one of civil
rights campaigner Paul Stephenson.

Meanwhile, the local council has
said that it collected signs from the protest for a display in the
local M Shed museum, which highlights, among other things, the port
city’s role in the slave trade.

Meanwhile in London, as
thousands marched in mostly peaceful protests, some also targeted a
monument to Winston Churchill, covering it in spray paint,
asserting that Churchill “was a racist,” among other
criticisms.

And, in Belgium, protesters set
their sights on monuments to King Leopold II, who ruled over the
country’s brutal colonial occupation of Congo during the 19th
century. A petition
calling for the removal of all
likenesses of the racist king has more than 60,000
signatures.

In Brussels, outside of the
Africa Museum, a bust of King Leopold II was covered in red paint.
Other monuments in the cities of Antwerp, Ghent, and Ostend were
also vandalized.

Debates surrounding colonial-era
and Confederate monuments have gained new momentum during the Black
Lives Matter protests, particularly after the governor of Virginia vowed to to remove a statue
of Confederate general Robert E. Lee last
week.

The conversation over
problematic monuments has reached the Bahamas, too, where in Nassau
people are calling for the removal of a statue of the explorer Christopher
Columbus. Familiar debates have
abounded, with critics bemoaning what they see as the erasure of
history, and others, tired of the conversation, calling for
immediate action.

The post Protesters Topple Colonialist Monuments in England
and Belgium as Black Lives Matter Demonstrations Spread Across
Europe appeared first on artnet News.