Demonstrations against racism: in Bristol, a statue of a slave ship thrown into a river

Protesters protesting against racism in Bristol on Sunday (June 7th) debunked a statue of an important slave trader who died in the 18th century, Edward Colston, located in the center of this city in the south-west of England with a slave-like past. 

Erected in 1895 in a street that bears his name, this bronze statue was torn from its pedestal by ropes pulled by a group of demonstrators.

Once the statue fell to the ground, they rushed over it to trample it, according to images broadcast on social networks and relayed by British television.  

One of them is photographed kneeling on the neck of the statue, reproducing the gesture of the white policeman who asphyxiated the black American George Floyd in late May in the United States, setting off a worldwide protest movement against racism and brutality police. 

"An insult to the citizens of Bristol"

"This man was a slave trader. He was generous to Bristol but it was on the back of slavery and it is absolutely abject. It is an insult to the citizens of Bristol," said protester John McAllister 71-year-old cited by the British agency Press Association. 

Protesters against systemic racism in Bristol, United Kingdom, defaced and tore down a bronze statue depicting slave trader Edward Colston, rolling through the streets and then throwing it into the river to a wave of applause. https://t.co/cc86EDQZHq pic.twitter.com/DFJ6M2a9BX

The controversial statue of Edward Colston for years in Bristol was then dragged through the port city before being dumped, sprayed with red paint, into the River Avon.

The local police announced the opening of an investigation and the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, denounced an act "absolutely shameful". 

Coming from a wealthy merchant family, Edward Colston (1636-1721) enriched himself in the slave trade. He is said to have sold nearly 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas between 1672 and 1689. 

He then used his fortune to finance the development of Bristol and good works, which long earned him a reputation as a philanthropist before disgrace. 

In total, some 10,000 people marched through the streets of Bristol, as did thousands more over the weekend across the UK. 

A vandalized statue of Winston Churchill 

Another statue was targeted Sunday in front of Parliament in London, that of the former conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and hero of the Second World War: the inscription "was a racist" was affixed under his name on the basement. 

In 2020 to question & seek removal of public statues is ok. But a small group deciding they can destroy & deface them is not. Churchill worked with Clement Attlee to stop Hitler's Nazis. Defacing this statue is an insult and does nothing to tackle racism today. pic.twitter.com/W8XQoW80HO

Already the day before, police had made 29 arrests in central London following a demonstration which also left 14 wounded in its ranks, it said Sunday.  

With AFP

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