In the summer of 2020, a monument to the victims of Stalinist political repression was unveiled in the city of Tayshet in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. On July 4, 2020, the monument was vandalised and defaced, making the inscription illegible. During Soviet rule, the Gulag camp Taishetlag was located near the… Read More
In the 1960s, two decades after India’s independence from colonial rule, certain sections ofthe society demanded the removal of specific memorial markers of the colonial past. Thincluded the statues in the Coronation Park in the capital of the country, New Delhi. TheCoronation Park harks back to the times of coronation… Read More
On September 29, 2005, a statue of three dikgosi (kings) who visited England in 1895 to protestagainst the imminent handover of their lands to the British South Africa Company was unveiledin Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone. The three dikgosi are seen as ‘Founders of the Nation’ andthe monument also tells the… Read More
In 1932, German citizens gathered for the dedication of the Kolonialelefant in Bremen. The Bremen Colonial Society created this monument in memory of the German soldiers who died in the German colonies during the First World War. As well as to glorify colonialism and bolster the neo-colonial movement (after… Read More
On the night of January 9, 2021, students protested outside of Jaffna University against the university’s decision to destroy a memorial commemorating the Tamil victims of the three-decade-long civil war. The war ended in 2009 at Mullivaikkal, a small village in the northeast coast, and the memorial was erected ten… Read More
Ukraine By Olivia Durand May 2022… Read More
The Lenin Statue in Bishkek was erected in 1984, during the 60th anniversary of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. Shortly after the fall of communism in 1991, all Lenin statues were taken down. However, Bishkek’s Lenin stood in the same square until 2003. This year, the square was going to… Read More
For the bicentenary of the birth of French General Louis Faidherbe in 2018, a protest campaign named ‘Faidherbe Doit Tomber’ (Faidherbe Must Fall) was organised contesting the Monument au Général Faidherbe (monument to General Faidherbe) located in Lille, France. The statue, which was erected in 1896, celebrates the general’s heroism… Read More
In autumn 2020 a bust of the 18th century King of Denmark and Norway Frederik V mysteriously disappeared from its pedestal at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It was later found to have been thrown into the canals of Copenhagen in a filmed protest by a group of… Read More
Plaza Baquedano at the centre of Santiago was traditionally the central meeting point for protests and celebrations in the Chilean capital. Since the outbreak of social protests in October 2019, the square and its monument became a central focal point. The protestors have tried to rename the square to Plaza… Read More
Germany By Berklee Baum March 2022… Read More
Unlike many monuments of past fascist leaders that have been eradicated throughout Europe, Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol, Italy, still includes a monumental bas-relief that depicts Benito Mussolini and reminds locals of the Mussolini Fascist regime of Italy. For fifty years, the bas-relief divided opinions between left-wing groups, who… Read More