Burned Leopold II statue removed from Antwerp square [View all]
Source: Brussels Times
A statue of former Belgian King Leopold II in Antwerp that was set on fire last week has been removed to be restored and put in a museum in the city.
“The statue has been vandalised and will be removed and temporarily housed in the sculpture collection of the Middelheim Museum, where it will be restored,” Johan Vermant, spokesperson for Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever, told The Brussels Times, adding that it is impossible to predict when the restoration will be complete, as the damage is extensive.
In another incident, a Leopold II bust in Ghent was splashed in red paint and marked “I can’t breathe,” the final words of George Floyd, an unarmed black man whose death at the hands of US police has sparked nationwide uprisings over police brutality and systemic racism.
The removal of the statue comes amid a wave of support for the removal of all monuments built to honour the former king, who brutalised Congolese people during the years he exploited the territory for his personal gain. Lack of reliable sources have made it difficult to form an accurate estimation of the number of Congolese deaths Leopold II’s colonial regime is responsible for, but modern estimates range from 1 million to 15 million. In recent years, a consensus of around 10 million deaths has been reached among historians.
Read more: https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/115940/burned-leopold-ii-statue-moves-to-antwerp-museum/
Maybe not quite as dramatic as throwing a statue of a slave trader into the River Avon, but King Leopold II caused even worse damage to the world. Especially what happened in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
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