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Netherlands: statue of a damaged colonial officer

2020-06-12T22:49:54.179Z


Protesters damaged the statues of a colonialist naval officer involved in the slave trade and a murdered far-right politician on Friday in the Netherlands. Read also: Statues, new targets of the "cultural war" in the United States The statue of Piet Hein, a 17th century admiral linked to the Dutch West India Company and considered one of the greatest heroes of the Dutch navy, was tagged with the...


Protesters damaged the statues of a colonialist naval officer involved in the slave trade and a murdered far-right politician on Friday in the Netherlands.

Read also: Statues, new targets of the "cultural war" in the United States

The statue of Piet Hein, a 17th century admiral linked to the Dutch West India Company and considered one of the greatest heroes of the Dutch navy, was tagged with the words " Killer " and " Thief " at night in Rotterdam .Red hands were also painted on an art center in this port city named in honor of Piet Hein's fleet captain, Witte de With. Also in Rotterdam, a statue of the far-right politician Pim Fortuyn, murdered in 2002, was partially covered with black tape and smeared with various slogans, including " No to racism ".

Activists of a group calling themselves the " Heroes of Ever " claimed to have disfigured these " statues of dubious personalities " to " criticize the glorification of Dutch colonialism and the murder of Pim Fortuyn ". They said on their Instagram account that they were inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement from the United States.

Education Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven disapproved of the initiative. " It is certainly good to launch the discussion on racism and institutional discrimination, but attacking statues of controversial historical figures does not help ," she said. Pim Fortuyn, known for his Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric, was gunned down in a parking lot in 2002 by an animal activist. The affair had rocked the Netherlands, which saw itself as a united and secure society. Piet Hein had become a hero in the Netherlands when he captured a Spanish fleet transporting a precious treasure to the Caribbean, during the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) against Spain.

The Witte de With center has announced that it will change its name. Symbols of colonialism and racism were also degraded in the United Kingdom, in Belgium, in Portugal, and in the United States from which the movement started after the death of George Floyd, a black man smothered by a white policeman in the city of Minneapolis.

Read also: "By putting down the statues of Lenin, the Ukrainians have redefined their relationship to History"

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-06-12

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