Am delighted a 150-year-old statue of King Leopold II of Belgium has been toppled in Antwerp. He was grotesque, responsible for some of the greatest human rights abuses of the 19th century. Half - yes half - of the Congo's population of 20 million died under his greedy rule. 
Leopold II was also a pedophile. He paid 800 pounds a month for a supply of English virgins sent to Belgium, with a preference for girls aged 10-15. He grew his fingernails so long that they curled, and he could only shake hands with two fingers. He taxed people to starvation.
Leopold II exploited the ivory and rubber trades in the Congo, and had those who did not meet ridiculous deadlines maimed or killed. Sitting on immense wealth, he ordered local mercenaries to massacre those who were late with their taxes.
One of Queen Victoria's ladies, the wry Marie Mallett, described him as "an unctuous old monster, very wicked." At age 67, he impregnated a teenage sex worker. In 1909, when he died, Belgians booed his funeral procession. So seriously, a statue for that vile mass murderer? No.
(and before you @ me for sources, all to be found on p. 470-471 of my biography of Queen Victoria.)
PS: In 1905 Mark Twain wrote a pamphlet satirising King Leopold's defence of the atrocities in the Congo: Why did people complain about a 1899 massacre of 80 people, he said, or the extermination of entire villages, when all he wanted was to convert them to Christianity?
