A bust of Victor Schoelcher installed on the Place du Cours Nolivos, in downtown Basse-Terre, the capital of Guadeloupe, was cut out and then removed overnight from Thursday to Friday, local media reported.
Read also: A statue of abolitionist Victor Schoelcher overturned in Guyana
The sculpture paid homage to this politician who decreed the abolition of slavery in the West Indies on April 27, 1848. It was on a concrete promontory, in the middle of an enclosed space. The access doors were forced open and the statue vandalized.
The bust was finally found on Friday morning at the top of the Col des Mamelles, below the road, more than 40 kilometers from where it was cut. It was a local television channel, Canal 10, which broadcast its discovery on social networks.
According to local radio RCI, the current investigation favors the thesis of a collective act in a context of protest by certain abolitionist figures.
Two unbolted statues in Martinique
The movement started in Martinique, on May 22, when two statues of Victor Schoelcher were unbolted on the occasion of the day to commemorate the abolition of slavery on the island. Activists opposed to the colonial heritage had claimed this gesture by demanding that the dark figures of emancipation be put more forward.
To read also: Statues of Victor Schoelcher destroyed in Martinique: "The totalitarianism of the vandals"
" I strongly condemn these behaviors which are not ignorance, but which are a deliberate desire to minimize the role of a man who has greatly helped us in the conquest of freedom, " said this week Guadeloupe historian Raymond Boutin, on RCI radio.
This is the first act of this type in Guadeloupe while the prefecture and elected officials of the City of Basse-Terre honored the memory of Victor Schoelcher, Tuesday, July 21, in front of this same bust, on the occasion of the day in homage to the latter, which is celebrated in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Martin.
The death of George Floyd, an African-American suffocated by a white policeman on May 25 in Minneapolis, has sparked debate across the United States, and then around the world, about racism and its historical foundations. This examination of conscience led to the unbolting of several statues of characters linked to slavery or the oppression of minorities.