* Anti-racism protests turn attention to statues
* Effigies of some of Europe's empire builders are toppled
* Some leaders, academics disagree with the approach
* They say history, and lessons from it, should not be wiped
out
* Confederate memorials in United States also back in focus
By Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Once feted as pioneers, some of
the architects of Europe's empire building now face a backlash:
anti-racism protesters are demanding their legacies be revisited
and their often imposing statues be torn down and consigned to
the trash heap of history.
From Cecil Rhodes in England and Captain James Cook in
Australia to Christopher Columbus in the United States and King
Leopold II in Belgium, the imperialists are under attack,
sometimes from the descendants of those they once colonised.
The cause? A sweeping global reassessment of history and
racism triggered by the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black
man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his
neck for nearly nine minutes while detaining him.
"Slavery is still very real history for black people - we
are still living with the consequences of it, with a racial
hierarchy that puts black people at the bottom," said Mary
Ononokpono, who is doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge on
the British-Biafran slave trade.
"Britain, Europe and America - and Africa - have to confront
their history," said Ononokpono. "We urgently need to have a
long-overdue and honest discussion about the history of slavery
and its legacy of impoverishment."
Protesters pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th
Century slave trader, in the English city of Bristol on Sunday
and dumped it in the harbour. It has been retrieved and will be
placed in a museum.
Such is the anger that the movement has broadened to target
colonialists, monarchs and explorers, who in some cases
destroyed or enslaved local populations across the world in the
European scramble for empire and treasure.
It has also reignited debate in the United States over
symbols associated with the South's pro-slavery Confederacy.
Opponents of the symbols, including monuments, memorials and
the Confederate flag, consider them emblems of slavery, racism
and U.S. xenophobia. Supporters say they represent the South's
heritage and culture, and serve as a memorial to Confederate
casualties during the 1861-65 Civil War.
SINS OF THE PAST
Statues have long been toppled as the currents of history
shift and empires rise and fall.
Just days after the American Declaration of Independence in
1776, revolutionaries felled a statue of George III. During the
French Revolution, Louis XV was torn down.
Josef Stalin fell in Budapest in 1956 during the Hungarian
Revolution. Vladimir Lenin was toppled as first the Berlin Wall
and then the Soviet Union itself crumbled.
'Iron Felix' Dzerzhinsky, who established what became the
KGB, was pulled down in 1991 outside KGB headquarters in Moscow.
In Baghdad, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's statue was felled
after the invasion in 2003, with the help of American troops.
Moscow even has a cemetery for fallen statues: a museum
littered with the crumbling heroes of a fallen superpower.
While revolutions may usher in sharp changes in historical
perspective, rarely has one man's death triggered so much debate
about racism and the sins of the past - which many black people
feel have yet to be atoned for.
Some find the destruction of statues troubling.
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott condemned
demands to take down a statue of Rhodes at Oxford University.
"Pulling down statues of past heroes is cultural vandalism
of the worst sort," Abbott, a Rhodes Scholar, told the
Australian Financial Review. "We should learn from their
strengths and their weaknesses but we should never imagine that
we have the last word in wisdom and insight."
In Africa, too, there is caution.
Anthony Bouadi, 30, a tour guide at Cape Coast Castle in
Ghana, where slaves were once held in windowless dungeons before
being sent across the Atlantic, said it was wrong to tear down
statues.
"They should have a specific museum for those monuments and
statues - a museum that portrays the history of slave-owners,"
Bouadi said.
"The history of the transatlantic slave trade is very cruel,
it's not a good thing. However, we have to remember what
happened in the past so we don't repeat what happened."
NOT EVERYONE WANTS CHANGE
In the United States, the modern movement to remove
Confederate memorials began with the 2015 murder of nine black
worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a
white supremacist.
Outrage over the massacre prompted South Carolina's governor
to sign a bill enabling the removal of the Confederate flag from
the State House grounds, and, according to a Southern Poverty
Law Center estimate, led to the removal of more than 100 other
Confederate symbols.
But resistance, both emotional and institutional, has been
fierce.
The planned removal of two Confederate statues in
Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 sparked a deadly white
supremacist protest in that city.
On Monday, a Virginia judge temporarily blocked Governor
Ralph Northam from taking down a Confederate monument in
Richmond.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected any
proposal to rename U.S. military bases that are named for
Confederate leaders. ORIGINAL SIN?
In Britain, a statue of wartime leader Winston Churchill was
scrawled with the words "was a racist" and obscene language
during an anti-racist protest in central London on Sunday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "absurd and
shameful" that a Churchill statue should be at risk of attack,
and that we should not "try to edit or censor our past."
Italian explorer and colonialist Christopher Columbus was
pulled down in Virginia on Tuesday.
In the northeastern French town of Lille, outrage over
Floyd's death has brought new energy to a campaign to remove a
statue of General Louis Faidherbe, who played a role in the
colonialisation of Algeria in the 1840s and was governor of
Senegal under Napoleon III.
"He ruled Senegal through terror, burning villages and
massacring people, yet despite that he continues to be glorified
in Lille," said Nicolas Butor, an activist for Survie, which
fights neocolonialism in France.
"We want the Faidherbe statue removed from public space. We
need to stop glorifying racist colonial figures," Butor said.
London has announced a review of street names and statues,
many of which reflect the rapid expansion of London's wealth and
power at the height of Britain's empire under Queen Victoria.
"Murderer" and "racist" were scrawled on a statue of
Victoria, who reigned from 1837-1901, in the English city of
Leeds.
So what is the solution?
Banksy, the street artist who hails from Bristol, had one
suggestion for how to bridge the divide over the statue of
Colston.
"We drag him out the water, put him back on the plinth, tie
cable round his neck and commission some life-size bronze
statues of protesters in the act of pulling him down. Everyone
happy. A famous day commemorated."