Some Australians were in no mood to celebrate the country’s national day on Sunday because they had long seen it as a reminder of colonial oppression. A few protesters took that antipathy a step further — by vandalizing statues to British settlers and an English king.
The damage done in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra was a fresh sign that Australia Day, which commemorates when a British fleet sailed into Sydney Harbor to start a penal colony in the late 18th century, remains divisive.
Even as some Australians mark the holiday with barbecues and pool parties, critics note that it set in motion centuries of oppression of Indigenous people. Some prefer to call it Invasion Day or Survival Day, and they make their displeasure clear through protests or other actions.
In Sydney this week, a statue of Captain James Cook, who claimed part of the Australian continent for the British crown in 1770, was drenched in red paint. Its hand and nose were severed, too. The statue had been restored after facing a similar attack last year.
In Melbourne, a monument to John Batman, an explorer who settled the city on lands occupied by Aboriginal people, was toppled and destroyed early Saturday. Protesters in Melbourne also spray-painted the words “land back” on a memorial for Australian soldiers who died fighting in World War I.
And on Sunday in Canberra, the capital, there was graffiti on a statue of King George V. “The colony is falling,” someone had written on its base in red paint.
Australian officials condemned the vandalism.
“We should find it in our hears and in our minds to respect differences of views but not let it turn ugly,” said Jacinta Allan, the state premier of Victoria, according to a report by the television station 9News.
Representatives for the police in the states of Victoria and New South Wales said on Sunday afternoon that there had been no arrests or charges in connection with the vandalism in Sydney and Melbourne. The police in Canberra did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
People have protested Australia Day for decades. Recent protests were bolstered by the global Black Lives Matter movement, in which people in the United States, Britain and elsewhere toppled statues they saw as symbols of racism and oppression.
Last year in Melbourne, a Captain Cook statue was sawed off at the ankles, and a monument to King George V was beheaded.
Many Australian officials are keenly aware of their country’s racist colonial past, and they’re not afraid to say so publicly. In one example, the City of Melbourne’s website has a section on “truth-telling” that talks about developing “a shared understanding of the impacts of colonization and dispossession on Aboriginal peoples.”
But merely acknowledging historical wrongs is not enough for some Indigenous activists. That was clear when King Charles III visited Australia last year.
“You are not our king,” a voice rang out shortly after Charles, who retains the ceremonial title of head of state in the former British colony, finished addressing Parliament. “Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us.”
The voice belonged to Lidia Thorpe, an Indigenous senator and activist for Aboriginal rights. As security guards hustled her out of the chamber, she accused British colonizers of genocide and demanded that Britain enter into a treaty with Australia’s Indigenous population.
The king watched impassively from the stage.