Toppled statue of English slave trader to be moved to a museum

London, London, UK (Great Britain)

A toppled statue of a 17th Century English slave trader will be retrieved from the harbour and exhibited in a museum, Bristol City Council said on Wednesday.

Anti-racism protestors pulled down the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol on Sunday and threw it into the harbour, triggering a debate about Britain's imperial past -- while protesting over the weekend against the killing of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd in the US.

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees said Colston's statue would be retrieved and displayed alongside Black Lives Matter placards from the recent protest so the 300 year story of slavery and the fight for racial equality could be better understood.

The pulling down of Colston's figure was followed by a statue of Robert Milligan, an 18th century slave trader, being removed from its plinth outside a London museum on Tuesday after officials decided it was no longer acceptable to the local community.

The statue stood in front of the Museum of London Docklands.

Elsewhere, hundreds of protestors in Oxford rallied outside the university's Oriel College on Tuesday (local time) to demand the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, reported CNN. The long-running campaign to remove the statue was reinvigorated after the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the world following the death of George Floyd.

The death of George Floyd on May 25 in the US has sparked a worldwide movement against police brutality, racism and social injustice, as a video showing a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Floyd's neck after the latter had been arrested, was widely circulated online on the next day.