A statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston has been beheaded, police say, as calls to remove sculptures commemorating colonizers and slavers sweep America on the back of anti-racism protests.
A Columbus statue was also vandalized in Richmond, Virginia, this week, according to local reports.
The incidents come as pressure builds in the United States to rid the country of monuments associated with racism following massive demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis last month.
Italian explorer Columbus, long hailed by school textbooks as the discoverer of “The New World,” is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas.
He is regularly denounced in a similar way to Civil War generals of the pro-slavery south.
The statue — which stands on a plinth in the heart of Boston — has been controversial for years, like other Columbus statues across the US, and has been vandalized in the past.
— AFP
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