
Australian police have arrested two women after a statue of British explorer James Cook was defaced. Cook was the captain of the first Western ship to reach the east coast of Australia.
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Before the arrests, the New South Wales police were alerted to graffiti on Cook's statue in Hyde Park in the central district of Sydney just after 4 a.m. (2000 GMT on Saturday).
The women carried a bag containing several spray-paint cans, as per the police statement. They were refused bail and will be charged with the destroying and damaging property, it said.
From Cecil Rhodes in England to Christopher Columbus in the United States and King Leopold II in Belgium, statues of empire builders have been under attack in recent weeks around the world, sometimes from the descendants of those they once colonised.
The defaced statue was cleaned on Sunday morning by the council workers.
The anti-racism protestors demand that the legacies of some of the architects of Europe's empire-building be revisited and their statues are taken down.