Outrage has been sparked after the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan ordered the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square to be covered by a metal box ahead of this weekend’s planned Black Lives Matter protests.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and conservative British lawmakers have slammed Khan’s decision to board up the monument, with some accusing the London mayor of “surrendering” the capital’s streets “to the mob”.
In response to Khan’s shameful act of cowardice, Boris Johnson took to Twitter, writing: “The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square is a permanent reminder of his achievement in saving this country – and the whole of Europe – from a fascist and racist tyranny.”
“It is absurd and shameful that this national monument should today be at risk of attack by violent protesters. Yes, he sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial.”
“We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations.”
Although Boris did not mention the London mayor by name, his stream of tweets were posted after multiple Conservative MPs roasted Khan for covering up the monument instead of deploying police officers to protect it.
Richard Tice, a British businessman and former Member of the European Parliament, on Friday posted a video of the boarded up monument to Twitter.
“This is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Tice says. “The greatest Briton, Winston Churchill, has gone. He has disappeared. He has been hidden, because the Woke Warriors seem now to be winning over the United Kingdom. I say to the Prime Minister, I say to the Mayor of London, this hoarding has to go. Winston Churchill must reappear here in Parliament Square, the mother of democracy, immediately!”
Czech man protesting against the vandalization, pointing out that Churchill helped to defeat Adolf Hitler, Anežka Čermáková / seznamzpravy.cz
The pedestal of former Winston Churchill statue in Prague became a target of Black Lives Matter movement supporters who vandalized the monument, scribbling “was a racist” and “Black Lives Matter” on the pedestal.
The incident caused outrage among many Czechs, with top politicians describing the act as an attempt to deface a historical monument.
“We must see historical figures in the context of the time in which they lived. Judging them without understanding the context is stupid and leads to such a stupid act,” said Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.
Police officers have immediately started to investigate the incident at the Winston Churchill square, where the statue of this British politician stands, according to Czech portal E15.
“Officers will document the whole incident on the spot, securing evidence,” said Jan Rybanský, a spokesman of the Prague police department.
Furthermore, the Prague 3 municipal district, to which the statue belongs, sent an anti-graffiti team to erase the slogans.
“To us, it is a form of vandalism. We are not considering removing the statue,” said Lucie Bukovanská, a spokeswoman of Prague 3 City Hall.
The defacement of the Prague statue met with clear condemnation across the Czech political spectrum, with Czech politicians from opposition, the presidential office, and the ruling government denouncing the act.
“Unfortunately, an aggressive mutation of progressive thought has already arrived in Prague, and Czech supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, following the example of their Western comrades, have painted a statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill red, a symbol of victory over Nazism in World War II,” wrote István Léko, editor-in-chief of Lidové noviny, one of the most-read Czech dailies.
“The latest pastime of the mob, unequivocally supported by left-wing and ultra-liberal politicians, is to tear down, damage, and vandalize statues of various politicians or generals, who will be henceforth referred to as slavers and racists. Anyone who has a slightly different opinion on these figures risks being called racist oneself,” Léko pointed out.
Czech economist and politician Ivan Pilip also commented on the incident, condemning the vandalization of the statue.
“Yes, Churchill was a racist by today’s standards. But at the time, most people were. Ignoring historical circumstances is like blaming medieval rulers for issuing the death penalty,” he wrote on Twitter.
Petruška Šustrová, a former dissident who fought for the rights of unjustly prosecuted people during the communist era, also disagreed with the form of the current protests against police brutality and racism in the United States, although she did not mention the Prague statue per se.
“Removing statues and pulling ‘inappropriate’ movies from the Internet seems to be more like an attempt to erase the past, to conceal it. I think that if we want to change the present and the future, we must rather talk about the past, discuss it, point out what was wrong and what must not return. The statues, which are now being torn down, have contributed to the discussion about this matter quite well. The problem will not disappear by not talking about it,” Šustrová wrote in a commentary for Lidové noviny daily.
The absurdity of the protesters’ actions was also pointed out by Matyáš Zrno, a Czech commentator, who warned against the standards used by protesters to judge historical figures.
“If we applied them in the Czech environment, we would have to tear down the statue of St. Wenceslas, because his government profited from the slave trade (although he only invested money in Christian slaves redemption). Of course, we will also have to take down Žižka’s statue as he was not an epitome of tolerance, either. President Masaryk signed several death penalties and passed laws against sodomy. And what about Havel’s benches? Let’s break them! Havel smoked and liked to drive cars (the ones powered by gas),” commented Zrno, pointing out that activists could come up with accusations about any of the greatest heroes of Czech history.
This time Yusuf Yerkel, the then advisor of Prime Minister Erdogan…this gentleman in the picture, who just stepped with his foot on the demonstrator lying on the ground and detained by the gendarmeri…and then took sick leave for 1 week because his foot allegedly did “Ouch!” and charged the demonstrator for it…philosophises about the “banality of evil” and criticises the “violence of the white policemen” in the USA.
The hotel sitcom’s iconic episode The Germans has been removed from UKTV Play, the catch-up and streaming platform of the broadcaster that owns channels including Dave, Yesterday and Gold. […]
Originally broadcast on Friday 24th October 1975 as the last episode in the sitcom’s first series, The Germans is perhaps the most celebrated episode of the comedy and sees a German family arrive to stay at the eponymous hotel.
When Basil, the irascible owner-manager, receives a blow to the head, his last iota of restraint and decorum is lost, and he berates the Germans with undiplomatic quips about the Second World War, before goose-stepping around the building in a mad daze.
However, the episode’s deletion is due to the racist terms used by the hotel’s elderly, doddering resident Major Gowen in relation to a cricket match. Despite even the argumentative, short-tempered Fawlty calling him out on his use of the language – outdated even by the time of the programmes mid-70s production – the scene has often been cut from broadcasts of the episode in the last decade.
The network explains in a statement: “UKTV has temporarily removed an episode of Fawlty TowersThe Germans from a Gold Box Set. The episode contains racial slurs so we are taking the episode down while we review it. We regularly review older content to ensure it meets audience expectations and are particularly aware of the impact of outdated language. Some shows carry warnings and others are edited. We want to take time to consider our options for this episode.”
Speaking to an Australian newspaper, John Cleese says: “One of the things I’ve learned in the last 180 years is that people have very different senses of humour. Some of them understand that if you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of you’re not broadcasting their views, you’re making fun of them. […]
“The Major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that, if people are too stupid to see that, what can one say?
An olive grove was burnt by illegal immigrants on the East Aegean island of Lesvos.
The burning of the olive grove took place in Moria, the location of the infamous migrant camp.
“Young olives planted a few years ago, the loss of [Saturday’s] arson by ‘strangers’ in Moria,” said Makis Pavlellis, a local to Moria who lives and works in the town and often photographs and documents destruction done by the illegal immigrants.
“But what can agriculture and livestock offer you now? See your interest, rent your fields to NGOs,” he added.
Currently, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are 36,900 illegal immigrants on all of the Aegean islands, with nearly half from Afghanistan, as reported by Greek City Times. The majority of the population on the Aegean islands are from Afghanistan (49%), Syria (19%) and Somalia (6%).
Of the 36,900 illegal immigrants on the islands, 22% were women and 33% were children, in which 6 out of 10 are younger than 12 years old. Of those children, around 13% were unaccompanied or separated from their parents and were mostly from Afghanistan.
However, 45% of the illegal immigrants were men, more than double the number of women.
Some 550 illegal immigrants from the island of Lesvos who were granted with an international protection applicant’s card, have departed from the island over the last four days.
Of those, 150 left on Tuesday.
According to AMNA, they are heading to their own destinations, as they are no longer covered by any program or organisation such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Greece’s asylum service estimates that 25% of some 20,000 illegal immigrants currently residing at Lesvos camps, including the Moria hotspot, have been granted the permit for movement within Greece. They are allowed to seek employment but will not be subsidised for housing by any program.
Asylum authorities say the movement of refugees from Lesvos to the Greek mainland is expected to continue in coming days.
