As campaigns across the globe to remove statues of historical figures with links to slavery and colonisation gain traction, local attention has turned to one of Guyana’s most famous relics of its colonial past: The statue of Queen Victoria (seen here on the lawns of the High Court in Georgetown.) Some local activists have started to call for the removal of the monument and that of Mahatma Gandhi in the Promenade Gardens. Gandhi has been accused of being “a fascist, racist and sexual predator,” while Victoria has been condemned for being monarch during the great expansion of the British Empire. According to a brief history of the monument published by historian Nigel Westmaas, the Queen Victoria Statue was sculpted by Henry Richard Hope-Pinker and commissioned in 1887. In 1894 it was unveiled outside the “Victoria law courts” in Georgetown for the first time. Victoria’s head was removed in 1954 by an explosive device in then British Guiana. In 2018 the statue was “vandalized” with red paint. (Photo by Orlando Charles)
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