What to do with traces of the French colonial previous in public house? The offended query, some cities are taking motion | EUROtoday

Ruben Pereira walks the streets of Paris, an indication in hand embellished with a QR code linking to a petition. His purpose? Raise passers-by’s consciousness of Congolese colonial historical past and marketing campaign for Avenue Léopold-II to be renamed, in 16^e district of the capital. The younger man has been decided since he noticed, someday in May 2025, a documentary retracing the historical past of the king of the Belgians and sovereign of the Congo from 1885 to 1908. A monarch honored by statues and road names in France though he was answerable for a violent coverage to which historians attribute the loss of life of thousands and thousands of Congolese.

“Those who worked forcibly in the rubber plantations had their hands cut off when they did not harvest enough. Many women were raped… When I discovered these atrocities, it shocked me deeply”remembers the 22-year-old man, who then relaunches a battle already carried out, in useless, in 2010, by the author Marc Wiltz, writer ofIt’s raining fingers within the Congo (Magellan, 2022). The job guarantees to be arduous, however Ruben Pereira considers it important that this colonial previous be higher identified.

He additionally has the ambition to persuade candidates for Paris City Hall to look at the thorny query of colonial reminiscence. “around the corner”. In different phrases, to have an interest within the names of public areas and statues which honor, typically inadvertently and fairly often with out rationalization, dates, occasions and other people intently related to the French colonial enterprise.

The first challenges

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