Confederate cemetery statute latest to be vandalised following Charlottesville violence
ADVERTISEMENTA statue at a cemetery in Ohio has become the latest to be damaged by vandals in a wave of attacks on Confederate soldier monuments.
Several stone figures have been targeted following the violence involving white-nationalists or supremacists and counter protesters in Charlottesville which left one woman dead.
On Aug. 12 a white nationalist rally had been organized to protest the plan by Charlottesville, which is home to the University of Virginia, to remove the statue of Confederate hero General Robert E. Lee.
The night before the rally, scores of white supremacists descended on Charlottesville and marched with tiki torches through the campus of the University of Virginia in a display that critics called reminiscent of a Ku Klux Klan rally.
Meanwhile anger boiled over on Monday (Aug 21) at the first Charlottesville City Council meeting since the incident.
Locals were demanding why permission for the the white-nationalist rally to protest over the removal of a statute of Lee had been given.
“That girl I knew that girl. You let her get murdered. KKK and neo-Nazis can say whatever they want, but a citizen that’s from here can’t? That’s ridiculous you just dragged out three people because they were expressing their freedom of speech,” protested a Charlottesville resident.
The anger highlights the debate over the display of the Confederate battle flag and other symbols of the rebel side in the Civil War, which was fought over the issue of slavery.