Group claims responsibility for Queen Victoria vandalism
A group calling itself the DelhiDublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade is claiming responsibility for the defacing overnight Thursday of two Montreal monuments to Queen Victoria.
Both statues — one in Victoria Square, the other on Sherbrooke St. in front of McGill University — were spattered with green paint after the group deemed “these racist statues in Montreal ... an insult to the self-determination and resistance struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide, including Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities.”
The vandalism comes two days before St. Patrick’s Day, timing the group suggests was not coincidental because the “statues are also an insult to the legacy of revolt by Irish freedom fighters, and anti-colonial mutineers of British origin.”
The group, which posted a video of one of the statues being vandalized, added that the monuments “particularly deserve no public space in Quebec, where the Québecois (sic) were denigrated and marginalized by British racists acting in the name of the putrid monarchy represented by Queen Victoria.”
Montreal police said Thursday they are investigating the incidents and analyzing the video posted by the group.