Activists target removal of statues including Columbus and King Leopold II

Statues of Christopher Columbus, King Leopold II of Belgium and a hero of Irish nationalism could be the next to fall as the campaign against symbols of racism and colonialism spreads around the world. Activists have organised petitions – and in one case set a statue on fire – to remove monuments to historic figures tainted by racism or slavery. None have gone as far as the group in Bristol that tumbled a statue of Edward Colston into the harbour on Sunday but they are pushing authorities to act in solidarity with protests in the United States over the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer. The targets are disparate – their lives separated by continents and centuries – but they share a common fate of once being revered and now falling into controversy, even disgrace. Belgian authorities in Antwerp took down a statue of Leopold II on Wednesday after it was set on fire and daubed with paint. It is being taken to a museum in the Flemish capital for restoration and is unlikely to be returned to its original spot. Across Belgium the Black Lives Matter protests have reignited the campaign to remove statues of Leopold II, whose brutal and rapacious rule of Congo is estimated by historians to have caused the deaths of 10m people. A group called Repair History has launched a petition calling on Brussels city authorities to remove all statutes of the king by 30 June, the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence from Belgium.