A statue of Gandhi has been vandalised here within the capital of Netherlands by unknown miscreants with graffiti and painting, amid a wave of attacks on controversial figures following the protests round the world after the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd, consistent with media reports.
The statue of Gandhi on the Churchilllaan in Amsterdam was covered with red paint and therefore the pedestal has ‘racist’ and an abbreviation for an expletive against the police chalked thereon, Metro, the Dutch newspaper, reported.
According to alderman Rutger Groot Wassink, the municipality will file a declaration for daubing.
“Obviously, we are against any sort of vandalism and daubing of those things is totally unacceptable,” the town official was quoted as saying by the AD.nl.
“It is logical that we’ll file a declaration, the image are going to be cleaned,” Wassink said.
It is not yet known who is behind the daubing. An employee of the Kunstwacht, who provides maintenance and repairs, says that the cleaning work can take hours
A 75-year-old man saw the daubs on Wednesday and called the municipality.
I have lived here for forty years and I even have never experienced this. I even have been watching the statue for years,” the person said.
Since the death of 46-year-old Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis, US, and subsequent worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, there has been much debate about street names and statues of individuals with a colonial past. everywhere the planet , statues of controversial historical figures are brought down or defaced.
Recently, images and buildings are defaced in various places that ask the colonial past of Netherlands , including the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and therefore the statue of Piet Hein in Rotterdam. These are anti-racist expressions that follow the death of Floyd through a white policeman , Metro reported.
Gandhi was referred to as a champion of human rights and non-violence. But in his twenties, which he spent in South Africa , he still called black people troublesome, very dirty and that they live like beasts and located that the White race were the dominant race . Later he renounced those ideas, the report added.
The statue was unveiled on the Churchillaan on October 2, 1990 in honour of Gandhi’s 121st birthday.
