City authorities in Antwerp have removed a statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II after it was daubed in paint and set on fire. The action came following a week of protests in the country against racism, with a particular focus on how Belgium memorialises its colonial past.
In the period from 1885 to 1908 Leopold personally oversaw the plunder of the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) with numerous atrocities recorded in the rubber industry, the material exported by colonial administrators back to Europe. Under Leopold’s rule, deaths from famine and exhaustion, as well as a falling birth rate, saw Congo’s population fall dramatically.
Some 30,000 people in Belgium have signed two petitions to remove memorials of the monarch in the past week. On Monday a similar statue in Brussels attracted crowds of protesters, spurred by the global Black Lives Matter movement, some of whom hung DR Congo flags from the bronze figure.
On Sunday, in Bristol, southwest England, crowds pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century English slave trader. On Tuesday, the mayor of London announced a review of all public works in the British capital with the aim to ‘improve the diversity of London’s public landmarks.’
The Leopold statue has been taken to the Middelheim sculpture museum for restoration but is unlikely to return to its pedestal in the Ekeren district of the port city. The surrounding area is part of a major civic refurbishment plan lasting through to 2023. A city spokesperson said the statue will probably therefore remain at the museum.
