The authorities of the southwestern English city of Bristol, located in the United Kingdom, have lifted the statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston from the bottom of Bristol Harbour, where it was thrown by Black Lives Matter protesters, the city council said on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th June, 2020) The authorities of the southwestern English city of Bristol, located in the United Kingdom, have lifted the statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston from the bottom of Bristol Harbour, where it was thrown by Black Lives Matter protesters, the city council said on Thursday.
Protesters pulled down and threw the bronze statue into the harbor on Sunday as an uproar was sparked in the United Kingdom on the heels of riots that flooded the United States over the past couple weeks in response to an African American man, George Floyd, being killed during an arrest by a white police officer.
"Early this morning we retrieved the statue of Colston from Bristol Harbour," Bristol City Council said on Twitter, attaching video footage of the process.
According to the statement, the statue will now be taken to "a secure location" and then become part of the city's museum collection, as ordered by Mayor Marvin Rees earlier this week.
In a follow-up tweet, the city council said "as we run a working harbour, the statue needed to be removed."
Edward Colston was one of Bristol's biggest benefactors, who helped build schools, churches and homes for the poor. However, his fortune was accumulated by the slave trade, causing his statue to be targeted by the protesters, who demand that the UK gets rid of symbols representing its colonial and racist legacy.
According to Rees, the city will invite residents to partake in consultations over what will stand in the toppled statue's place.
Similar incidents took place in many other big UK cities over the past week, including London itself, where protesters spray painted the statue of Winston Churchill, the former prime minister who led the country through the World War II period and then again from 1951 to 1955, and is known to make explicit statements on race.
