In Bordeaux, a degraded slave statue, the town hall files a complaint – the huffpost

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JUSTICE – Bordeaux town hall will file a complaint against X after the degradation of a slave statue, erected in memory of the city’s slave-trading past, an act “probably racist”, announced this Monday, September 13 the municipality.

A bronze statue representing, on a human scale, a slave bought by two Bordeaux brothers in the 18th century, then freed, was discovered brushed with white paint or lime to the bust.

According to Stéphane Gomot, municipal councilor in charge of heritage and memory, this is an act “probably racist”.

If this is true, he said, “it is an ultra-violent attack on everything that this statue represents, an attack on women, a racist attack, an attack on the memory of people deported within the framework of the slave trade, an infringement of art ”.

A “clearly political” act

Denouncing a “clearly political” act, Karfa Diallo, elected regional, also announced to file a complaint on behalf of his association Mémoires et Partages, which fights for the memory of slavery.

It is “yet another provocation against the memory of a crime against humanity that is slavery”, he adds on France 3. “This act obeys a racist rhetoric of the extreme right, which wants to disqualify the color black in favor of the color white ”, he is indignant.

By midday, the statue had been cleaned.

The statue of the slave Modeste Testas (1765-1870), née Al Pouessi, was inaugurated in May 2019 on the banks of the Garonne in the presence of his descendant Haitian, one more step in the recognition by Bordeaux of its past enrichment linked to slavery.

See also on The HuffPost: A gigantic statue symbol of the slave past debunked in the United States