A statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston has been beheaded ahead anti-racism protests which intensified in demand for justice for George Floyd, who was brutally killed by a police official in Minneapolis.

According to reports, The Christopher Columbus statue was also vandalized in downtown Miami, and another was dragged into a lake earlier in the week in Virginia.

The incidents come as pressure builds in the United States to rid the country of monuments associated with racism following massive demonstrations over Floyd’s killing.

Italian explorer Columbus, long hailed by school textbooks as the so-called discoverer of “The New World,” is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas.

He is regularly denounced in a similar way to Civil War generals of the pro-slavery South.

The Boston statue has been controversial for years, like other Columbus statues across the US, and has been vandalized in the past.

Boston police were alerted to the damage shortly after midnight. An investigation is under way but no one has been arrested, he added.

Moreover, anti-racism campaigners in the United Kingdom (UK) have demanded to remove statues of Mahatma Gandhi from London and Leicester as Black Lives Matter movement spreads nationwide support for the dismantling of portraits and statues of historic figures who have expressed hatred and racism towards Black people.

Thousands of people are demanding the removal of controversial monuments and statues around the UK, which campaigners describe as “racist and unwelcoming.”

The campaign basically has brought focus on Gandhi who is viewed as a racist who publicly expressed racist views for Black people.