Captain Cook statue sawn off at ankles in Australia Day protests
‘Cook was a murderer for British imperialism, Queen Victoria a director of genocide’
‘We must always debate and discuss our differences in a respectful manner’
ACTIVISTS in Australia have toppled a statue of Capt James Cook and daubed a sculpture of Queen Victoria with red paint in protest at British settlement more than two centuries ago.
The bronze statue of the British explorer was sawn off at the ankles, with vandals spraying the words “the colony will fall” on its granite plinth.
Capt Cook, who was born in Yorkshire and claimed the eastern coast of Australia for the British Empire, was described as a “murderer for British imperialism” by protesters.
The damage to the monuments, both of them in Melbourne, came as the country prepared to celebrate Australia Day today, the annual holiday which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney in 1788 and the establishment of New South Wales as a penal colony.
Australia Day has become increasingly contentious, with some Aboriginal people calling it Invasion Day and saying it marks the start of a process of dispossession and discrimination for the original inhabitants of the continent. Politicians condemned the attacks, which are being investigated by police, as inexcusable vandalism.
The statue of Capt Cook, which was erected in 1914 in a park in St Kilda, was toppled at around 3am local time yesterday.
The Queen Victoria statue, which was unveiled in 1907 and is located near Melbourne’s Royal Botanical Gardens, was sprayed with red paint.
Activists unfurled a banner, decorated with an Aboriginal flag, that read “Land Back”.
Video footage of the attacks was posted on an anonymous Instagram account. It showed masked and hooded protesters climbing the plinth of the Capt Cook statue and cutting it off at the ankles with angle grinders.
“Captain Cook was a murderer for British imperialism, Queen Victoria a director and overseer of genocide,” a message on the Instagram account read. “Colonialism will never be celebrated, only toppled. Listen up, act up, disrupt.”
Jacinta Allan, the premier of Victoria, said the damaged statues would be repaired and cleaned, adding: “This sort of vandalism has no place in our community.”
John Pesutto, the leader of the opposition in the state and a member of the centre-right Liberal Party, also condemned the attacks, describing them as “totally unacceptable”.
He acknowledged that Australia Day, celebrated each year with picnics and barbecues, “is a source of pain for a number of indigenous Australians”.
But, he said, “we must always debate and discuss our differences in a respectful manner.”
Statues of British colonial figures have been attacked several times in the past, particularly in the lead-up to Australia Day, as the country’s culture wars over its historical legacy gather pace.
There is an ongoing debate about whether to celebrate Australia Day on a less contentious date, one that is not so intrinsically tied to the continent’s white settlement.