Whether in the context of the West reckoning with its colonial past or former Soviet states reconciling antagonistic historical narratives to recover or reaffirm their own distinct identities, over the past three decades, contested histories have increasingly served as a flashpoint for conflict. Last Friday, the OSCE High Commissioner on… Read More
This week, activists in Europe and the United States attacked statues of historical figures because they are seen as colonialists, imperialists, slave-traders, and racists. Will these symbolic acts result in the structural and systematic changes that are needed? Steven Stegers, Marie-Louise Ryback-Jansen, 10 June 2020, The Hague/Berlin A monumental movement… Read More
Yesterday, protestors in the English port city of Bristol toppled a statue of an 18th Century slave- trader, dragged the life-size bronze through the streets, and heaved it over a stone embankment into the Bristol harbour. Hundreds of Bristol residents looked on and cheered. (See appended link). The statue’s unauthorized… Read More
A day after this blog post was originally published, the statue was removed. For details see local news report at NBC Philadelphia. During this past weekend , the city of Philadelphia, like dozens of cities across America, erupted in mass protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, an… Read More
Earlier this month a statue of a former Soviet general was removed from a municipality in Prague resulting in protests by the Russian minority in the Czech Republic and anger from Moscow. In March 2020, the Virginia legislature voted to allow municipalities the right to remove statues, overturning a previous… Read More
Motivated by a natural curiosity and well trained instincts, Lamberto Zannier, High Commissioner for National Minorities at the OSCE, attended the meeting organized around the project Contested Histories in Public Spaces in Oxford, which reviewed several cases of controversial monuments and statues around the world. In this meeting, Mr. Zannier… Read More