Noah, a teenager is determined to bring Belgium‘s controversial statue of King Leopold II crashing down.
“For me when you put a statue of Hitler in Berlin, for me, that is like putting up a statue of Leopold in Brussels,” Noah, who preferred to use just his first name due to the current political climate, said.
Reportedly, Noah’s parents are from what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which was owned by Leopold II in the late 19th century.
Responding to Noah’s petition, a spokesperson for Brussels Mayor Philippe Close told CNN he doesn’t have the authority to remove statues of Leopold II, which are national monuments, but he supports a national conversation on their fate.
As the King of the Belgians, Leopold II ruled from 1865 to 1909 and has been described as worse than Adolf Hitler for his genocide against the people of the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) who he considered as his personal property including their lands and minerals.
