A commission established to review landmarks in the UK capital and improve the diversity of the city's monuments may recommend the demolition of a number of statues, such as those erected to commemorate slave trade, London Mayor Sadiq Khan told the Sky News broadcaster on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th June, 2020) A commission established to review landmarks in the UK capital and improve the diversity of the city's monuments may recommend the demolition of a number of statues, such as those erected to commemorate slave trade, London Mayor Sadiq Khan told the Sky news broadcaster on Monday.
The commission was set up earlier in the day after a statue in Bristol of 18th-century slave trader Edward Colston was torn down and thrown into the harbor by protesters on Sunday, amid mass demonstrations against racial inequality and police brutality.
"I suspect the recommendations of the commission may will be some of the statues be taking down, for example, some of those slavers, for whom there are statues across our city. I suspect the commission may come back and say it is inappropriate to be memorializing, to be celebrating these people," Khan said.
According to the mayor, this may concern monuments to those who were involved in the Royal African Company that was launched in the 17th century.
A wave of protests has swept through the United Kingdom following the death of George Floyd, an African American male, in the custody of US police officers on May 25. Apart from toppling the statue of Colston, Black Lives Matter activists defaced a statue of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Police officers also came under attack in London multiple times over the weekend, prompting a sizable deployment of anti-riot officers onto the streets on Sunday night.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated on Sunday that the protest movement had been "subverted by thuggery," which amounted to a "betrayal of the cause they purport to serve."
