King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia will be renamed because of its links to ‘evil tyrant’ Belgian ruler amid Black Lives Matter movement
King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia will be renamed due to its links to an ‘evil tyrant’ who was responsible for the deaths of millions.
The WA Government are seeking to rename the range of hills in the western Kimberley region of the state amid heightened discussion about controversial historical figures during the Black Lives Matter movement.
The iconic gorges take its name after the former Belgium king, whose brutal rule in the Congo more than a century ago left as many as 10 million dead.
Lands Minister Ben Wyatt said the ‘evil tyrant’ – who never visited Western Australia – should no longer be honoured.
King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia will be renamed due to its links to an ‘evil tyrant’ who was responsible for the deaths of millions. Pictured: The road to Tunnel Creek National Park and Windjana Gorge National Park from Fitzroy Crossing part of the King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia
He referred to anti-racism protesters vandalising a statue of Leopold II in Antwerp, Belgium, in the wake of the global movement.
‘It highlights the absurdity that we still have something named after someone who the Belgians do not have any kind sentiment to themselves,’ Mr Wyatt told ABC Radio Perth.
‘He was a nasty piece of work and we have this odd historical artefact still with us about why it is named after him.’
Statues in half a dozen cities across Belgium have been defaced because of the king’s brutal rules over the Congo, where he forced multitudes into slavery to extract rubber, ivory and other resources for his own profit.
‘The Germans would not get it into their head to erect statues of Hitler and cheer them,’ said Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, an activist in Congo who wants Leopold statues removed from Belgian cities.
‘For us, Leopold has committed a genocide.’
King Leopold Range Conservation Park covers nearly 400,000 hectares of sandstone mountains, palm groves and huge granite outcrops.
The range, which was named in the late 1800s, reaches almost 1,000 metres in height.
More to come