Colonialist’s monument toppled in Melbourne ahead of Australia Day
Protesters in Australia have toppled a monument honoring a 19th-century colonialist as Indigenous rights protests engulf the country during its national holiday.
The memorial of John Batman, one of the founders of the southeastern city of Melbourne, was toppled in Melbourne on Sunday a day before Australia Day.
Australia Day is a national holiday held each year on 26 January, the anniversary of Britain’s First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove in 1788.
Many Indigenous Australians say the date causes them pain as it marks the beginning of the colonial oppression of the Indigenous population and the imperialist expansion of Britain in Australia and Oceania.
Batman facilitated the foundation of Australia as a British colony by massacring the Indigenous people of Tasmania and forcing a one-sided land deal upon the Indigenous people of Victoria.
Images on social media showed Batman’s stone monument, located in central Melbourne, broken in half and lying on the ground.
Victoria state police said they have been alerted to the attack and are investigating it as an act of vandalism.
The sandstone statue of James Cook in eastern Sydney was also doused in red paint and had its hand and nose smashed off on Thursday.
Cook was a famous British cartographer and explorer who claimed eastern Australia for the British Empire.
The local council in Randwick, where the statue is located, described the act as “a disservice to the community and a disservice to reconciliation.”
Local politician Andrew Hay on Friday called the protesters “low lives” seeking to make a “political point.”
In recent years, national monuments and statues of colonial figures have become targets of protesters ahead of Australia Day.
Thousands of demonstrators hold rallies on the holiday, condemning the historical plight of Australia’s Indigenous peoples at the hands of colonial settlers.
Protesters demand appropriate reparations being paid to the Indigenous community of Australia in return for the atrocities the European settlers committed against them.
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