Anti-racism protesters in England defaced the memorial to Winston Churchill in Westminster during Black Lives Matter protests on Sunday, local media reported.
According to the Evening Standard, demonstrators scrawled “was a racist” on the statue of the wartime British Prime Minister in Parliament Square on Sunday afternoon as thousands descended on London for another protest over an American black man George Floyd’s death.
Activists surrounded the monument and jeered “Churchill was a racist”, despite others intervening to protect it from further defacement, reports Hindustan Times.
The same statue was also defaced with green graffiti during a huge anti-racism rally on Saturday, the 76th anniversary of D-Day.
It prompted Piers Morgan of ITV Breakfast program Good Morning Britain, to tweet: “Memo to protesters in Westminster today: defacing Sir Winston Churchill’s statue on the 76th anniversary of D-Day is not a good way to make your point.”
Thousands flooded the streets outside London’s US Embassy yesterday for another Black Lives Matter rally, alongside rallies in Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol among the other UK cities.
In Bristol, in southwest England, a statue honoring the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston was torn down by protesters.
Demonstrators were later seen rolling the statue to the nearby harbor and throwing it into the River Avon.
“There was a small group of people who clearly committed an act of criminal damage in pulling down a statue near Bristol Harbourside,” Avon and Somerset police said Sunday in a statement.
“An investigation will be carried out to identify those involved and we are already collating footage of the incident,” the statement read.
According to local police, Sunday’s Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol was attended by an estimated 10,000 people.