BREAKING: Angry Commonwealth protestors topple and deface statues of Queen Elizabeth and her great-great-grandmother Victoria

The bronze sculptures of Britain’s current monarch and her great-great grandmother were hauled down, daubed with red paint and strangled with flags in Winnipeg.

Boris Johnson today decried the violent mob who celebrated ‘tearing this b**ch down’ as they toppled and desecrated statues of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II during Canada Day protests sparked by the discovery of mass graves of indigenous schoolchildren.

In scenes reminiscent of the BLM protests where a ‘hit list’ of ‘racist’ statues in the US and UK was drawn up for destruction after the murder of George Floyd, the bronze sculptures of Britain’s current monarch and her great-great grandmother in Winnipeg were hauled down, daubed with red paint and even appeared to have been strangled with Mohawk flags.

With no police to be seen anywhere, protesters in orange led by members of the left-wing anti-colonial ‘Idle No More’ group campaigning for Canada Day to be cancelled, tied ropes to the necks of the statues and ripped them to the ground to chants of ‘no to genocide’ and ‘bring her down’ amid fury over the deaths of 1,000 indigenous children found buried in mass graves this month.

Sharing footage of Victoria’s statue coming down, self-styled ‘Land Defender’ Waabishkaa Ma’iingan Naakshig, tweeted: ‘I helped tear the b**ch down’.

1,500 miles west, a statue of Captain Cook — the first Briton to land in British Columbia — was also pulled down in the city of Victoria before being hurled into the harbour in scenes reminiscent of the destruction of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol last year. Cook’s statue was replaced by a red wooden dress — a colour and symbol for indigenous people in Canada with the plinth vandalised with ‘colonizer’.

Between the 18th century and the 1970s, 150,000 indigenous Canadian children were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages after being sent to Catholic schools. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died, but the policy of the Canadian Government appears to have little to do with the British Royal Family, who are ceremonial heads of state.

350 Native American boarding schools were also established in the United States during the early 19th and mid 20th centuries to ‘civilize’ Native American children into Euro-American culture. Yesterday’s protests in Canada raise the prospect of them spreading to the US and similar investigations into mass graves there after claims of neglect, abuse, and death.

Downing Street has today condemned the toppling of statues of the Queen and Queen Victoria in Canada during protests over the discovery of unmarked graves belonging to indigenous children.

Boris Johnson’s spokesman said: ‘We obviously condemn any defacing of statues of the Queen’, adding: Our thoughts are with Canada’s indigenous community following these tragic discoveries and we follow these issues closely and continue to engage with the government of Canada with indigenous matters.’

Tory MP Alexander Stafford branded the vandalism ‘incredibly disrespectful’ and said it was an ‘odd juxtaposition’ trying to blame the monarchy for the tragedy over which it had no political control.

‘Frankly I think it is people trying to link and use the awfulness of the tragedy that has been uncovered for their own politician, republican views. I don’t think the two should be linked,’ he told MailOnline, adding: ‘It’s up to Canada their debate about the Commonwealth and our current monarch … but they shouldn’t try to rewrite history and force their own political views about a constitutional matter on what was clearly a horrific issue that happened in the past.’

He also volunteered to take the statues and have them erected in his Rother Valley constituency in South Yorkshire, saying: ‘We haven’t got a statue of any of the monarchs, I’ll definitely take them, so rather than destroy them send them my way.’ Read more: daily mail

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