• RAPAR stands in solidarity with yesterday's action in Bristol when young people dismantled Edward Colston's statue.  

• The Status Now Network began on 27th March with sending this Open Letter to the leaders of both the British and Irish Governments calling for access to healthcare housing and food for everyone with secure Status:  All Black Lives Matter.

It is estimated that during Colston’s involvement with the Royal African Company, it transported around 84,000 African men, women and children, who were branded with the company’s initials on their chest. Around 19,300 of these people died on their journey to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas.
Designed to maximise profit and hold as many enslaved people as possible, the boats were hotbeds for dysentery, dehydration and scurvy. 

The Independent- Edward Colston: Who was the Bristol slave trader and why was his statue pulled down?

RAPAR considers that any attempt to criminalise the people who removed his statue would be deeply misplaced and shortsighted, only piling insult on top of the injury that communities around the world are expressing at this time in the name of #blacklivesmatter.