The statue of George Washington in London has been covered up to protect it from Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists, who have vandalized historical monuments around the Western world for the past three weeks.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered the statue to be covered in a grey box to protect it from vandalization. The statues of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi have also had their statues protected in a similar way, Breitbart reported.
Radical activists have been rioting and looting in the United States and the United Kingdom ever since the death of George Floyd on May 25. Floyd, a black man, died after a white police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck to detain Floyd for several minutes.
As a result of the riots, at least 20 people have been killed, including a black police chief. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd died, at least 19 people were shot in the resulting riots.
The Commonwealth of Virginia gifted the statue of Washington to the people of the United Kingdom in 1921. It is located outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where a BLM protest and anti-vandalization counter-protest occurred on Saturday.
There is a rumor that the Washington statue sits atop American soil brought in with it so that the country’s first president’s claim that he would “never set foot in London again!” would remain true.
The decision to protect the statues comes after BLM vandals defaced the statues of historical icons such as Christopher Columbus. The radical group has also called for removing the statues of several famous American historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, who they refer to as a racist.
Last week, a statue of Lincoln was vandalized with spray painted words: “RACISM IS A PANDEMIC TOO”, “SILENCE IS VIOLENCE”, “BLM”, and “ABOLISH THE POLICE” on his statue.
Statue of former US president Abraham Lincoln now bears the names of black people killed by American police pic.twitter.com/WHBwLIOqjb
— Mattha Busby (@matthabusby) June 6, 2020
While Lincoln ended slavery in the United States, Washington himself also wished to see the end of it, saying in 1786, “I never mean (unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase: it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by the legislature by which slavery in the country may be abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptible degrees.”
