JAKARTA - The wave of Black Lives Matter actions has spread beyond just voicing racism. At the same time, many statues of slavery figures were also destroyed because they were considered to perpetuate racism. Now, one of the statues damaged by protesters is the famous British explorer Captain James Cook in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, June 14.
Police acted swiftly to arrest the two female perpetrators who destroyed the statue of the explorer who led the first ship from the West and reached the east coast of Australia. The two were arrested for the swift efforts of the local police after receiving reports regarding the vandalism of the Cook statue in Hyde Park.
The police have also found evidence of the involvement of the two women through the bags they were carrying. Each contains a number of spray paint cans. "The two women were found with a bag containing a number of spray paint cans," said Sydney police.
Therefore, both of them do not receive security deposit rights. In fact, both of them were also charged with property destruction charges. Not surprisingly, the police began to keep watch around the statue so that a similar incident would not be repeated. Moreover, on the same day, the cleaners had intervened to clean Cook's statue from graffiti.
In the last two weeks, demonstrations promoting anti-racism have spread across Australia. The protests, which initially protested the racism that occurred in western countries over the death of black man George Floyd, became the focus by demanding that all the statues of slavery figures who had past sins in Australia be torn down.
To that end, Australia is starting to follow in the footsteps of other countries in demanding the removal of statues whose past sins perpetuate racism. Some of them include statues of Cecil Rhodes in England, Christopher Columbus in the US, and King Leopold II in Belgium.
Meanwhile, in neighboring New Zealand, the Maori have been pushing hard for the government to remove the statue of John Hamilton. Hamilton's figure for them is not worthy of being remembered for being involved in the persecution and murder of the native New Zealand, the Maori.
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