Churchill statue vandalized next to the British Parliament in London: “Zionist war criminal”

A spokesman for the London Metropolitan Police (Met, or Scotland Yard) said that the man was seen spraying the monument with red spray around four in the morning local time, and a few minutes later he was detained by several agents.

The man, who remains in custody, was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damagethe Met said in a statement.

The Police have cordoned off the area while this morning they proceed to clean the bronze sculpture, which was covered in slogans like free palestine y Stop the genocide in Gaza.

The slogan could also be read Let’s globalize the intifadainterpreted by some as a call for international mobilization for the Palestinian cause but considered anti-Semitic by the Jewish community, which links it to attacks against civilians.

Last December, after two terrorist attacks during Jewish celebrations in the United Kingdom and Australia, the London and Manchester Police announced that they would arrest those who incited the riot. intifadaa word that in Arabic means ‘uprising’ and is associated with the different uprisings of the Palestinian people against Israel.

For its part, The British Government has promised more protection to the Jewish community, after on October 2, a British-Syrian man ran over and stabbed several parishioners with a car in a Manchester synagogue during the Yom Kippur holiday.

Three people died in that attack, including the attacker and a parishioner who were shot by the Police, and three others were injured.

It’s not the first time

This is not the first time that the statue of Churchill, who ruled between 1940 and 1945 – during the Second World War – and again between 1951 and 1955, has been vandalized.

In June 2020, appeared with graffiti that accused the former prime minister of racist, during a protest Black Lives Matter movement triggered by the death at the hands of police officers of the African-American George Floyd in the United States.

In October of that same year, an activist from the environmental organization Extinction Rebellion was sentenced to pay a fine after painting the word “racist” on the pedestal during a protest against climate change.

This led to the statue of Winston Churchill having to be protected and covered with metal planks.

The 3.65 meter high monument was created by Ivor Roberts-Jones and inaugurated in 1973 by the former Tory leader’s wife, Clementine Churchill, and is part of a set of 12 statues dedicated to statesmen in London’s Parliament Square.