PARIS (AP) — An activist for Black rights has gone on trial in Paris for defacing a statue of a historical figure from France’s colonial, slave-trading past. Franco Lollia called his protest a political act to denounce deep-seated racism in France. Lollia was on trial for spraying “state Negrophobia” in red paint on the pedestal of the statue outside parliament in Paris last June. The statue honors Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century royal minister who wrote rules governing slaves in France’s overseas colonies. Lollia told the court Monday that in his view, Colbert committed crimes against humanity. He said celebrating Colbert with a statue shows that the French state “is viscerally Negrophobic.” Lollia, who is Black, called the trial “an insult.”
