On June 22, 2020 the statue of Townsville’s founder and namesake Robert Towns was vandalised by the smearing of red paint on his hands to symbolise blood. The vandalisation formed part of a wider movement in Australia to confront the nation’s colonial past. Robert Towns and Townsville as a city… Read More
The Monument to Humanity was a 30-metre statue that played a prominent role in the skyline of the city of Kars. In the wake of the 2011 Turkish General Election, the then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid a visit to the city of Kars and, during a campaign stop, declared… Read More
In 2019, Singapore commemorated its bicentennial and the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles to its shores. The innovative approach to addressing the statue of Raffles and the state’s narrative regarding his legacy sets this case apart from other colonial-era figures around the globe. Singapore’s historical narrative… Read More
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020, the statue of the founder of the British colony of Penang, Francis Light came under increased scrutiny and public vandalisation, which sparked both heated and starkly polarized debates on social media. This case offers insight into Malaysian decision-makers… Read More
The removal of the Stalin statue from the central square in Gori represents a top-down policy implementation approach to a contested historical monument. Such implementations of Georgia’s Freedom Charter illustrate the legal framework under which symbols, monuments and names of sites related to the Soviet past become reconfigured. However, positions… Read More
The Monuments to the Odessa Founders features prominently Catherine II of Russia and the men who assisted in the creation of the Russian Empire’s new southern frontier in Ukraine. The monument was inaugurated in 1894, but the start of communist rule in Ukraine prompted a series of removals and replacements… Read More
The ‘Statue of Peace’ in Berlin-Moabit commemorates ‘comfort women’, a euphemism for women who were sexually enslaved by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The memorial urges historical justice and reconciliation. After its unveiling in September 2020, the installation drew criticism from Japanese officials. Although the Berlin-Mitte district… Read More
The Eye that Cries commemorates all victims of Peru’s two-decade-long internal conflict, regardless of political affiliation. In 2006, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held in the Miguel Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru case that the names of 42 murdered Shining Path members, widely considered to be perpetrators in the conflict,… Read More