MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th June, 2020) UK newspaper The Guardian has refused to comment on a petition calling for the publication to be shut down over its historic links to slavery, which has received thousands of signatures.
The petition said that the outlet, which has supported the recent anti-racism protests and called for a "much bigger discussion of our nation's history" was funded by profits from cotton manufacturing that used slave labor. It was launched on the change.org petition website last week and has since gained 12,000 signatures.
"We will not be providing any comment," the newspaper's media department told Sputnik.
Novelist Tony Parsons, who launched the petition, berated The Guardian for its past "shameful links to slave-owning Confederate south," urging people to switch to "Abraham Lincoln supporting" news outlets. Change.org users who supported the petition slammed the newspaper for what they say is hypocrisy.
The calls for The Guardian to shut down come as the UK is rocked by anti-racism protests triggered by the killing of African American man George Floyd in US police custody in Minneapolis in late May. The incident has provoked an international anti-racism movement.
Apart from taking to the streets in support of the black community, protesters seek to tear down or deface statues of historical figures who played a role in colonialism or slave trade, or have made controversial statements about race that are now unacceptable if judged by the norms of the modern world.
In the UK, a statue of WWII leader Sir Winston Churchill was vandalized in London. In Bristol, protesters toppled a monument to 18th-century slave trader Edward Colston.
