A BRONZE statue of the Little Mermaid in Denmark was defaced with the words “racist fish” in a bizarre protest.
The 107-year-old monument honouring Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairy tale perches on a rock in the sea off a pier in Copenhagen.
Police said it had not yet identified the perpetrators. The 107-year-old sculpture, which is visited by one million tourists each year, has been vandalised before, including by anti-whaling campaigners and pro-democracy activists, twice suffering decapitation.
“We consider it vandalism and have started an investigation,” a spokesman for the Copenhagen police said.
The 5ft statue is one of Copenhagen’s most popular tourist spots.
This isn’t the first time the statue has been targeted by vandals, in January the rock she sits on had “Free Hong Kong” sprayed onto it.
Protesters have also knocked her off her perch, beheaded her, hacked one of her arms off and poured paint over her.
The statue, designed by sculptor Edvard Eriksen and modelled on his wife, Eline, was created as a tribute to the classic fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen about a mermaid who falls in love with a prince.
I am having a hard time seeing what is particularly racist in the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.
Ane Grum-Schwensen
Last month, a statue in Copenhagen of a Danish missionary who was behind the colonization of Greenland was covered in red paint and the words “decolonize”.
Protesters of the Black Lives Matter movement around the world have in recent months rallied against statues of historical figures who played a role in racist oppression, such as slave traders and colonialists.
The Little Mermaid has not been part of this debate but last year a Disney live action remake of the 1989 animated film of the same name was the subject of a controversy after African American actress Halle Bailey was cast in the central role.
“I am having a hard time seeing what is particularly racist in the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” Ane Grum-Schwensen, researcher at the H.C. Andersen Center at University of Southern Denmark, told local news wire Ritzau.
‘RACIST FISH’
In US, where the Black Lives Matter movement was sparked in reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, dozens of statues have been torn down, burned of defaced.
The statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston’s North End Park was beheaded.
Following the beheading, Mayor Marty Walsh said on Wednesday the city will temporarily remove the monument and reassess its “historic meaning.”
It was announced earlier this month that the statue of Theodore Roosevelt perched outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York City will be removed.
Most read in News
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the museum asked that the statue at the entrance to the museum on Manhattan’s Upper West Side be “removed.”
“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” de Blasio said in a statement.
In the UK, a statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader and philanthropist was toppled and thrown into Bristol city harbour in June.
In London, police were forced to protect Winston Churchill’s memorial from those who wrote: “Churchill was a racist”.
