{"id":27655,"date":"2018-11-12T11:40:17","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T11:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=27655"},"modified":"2018-11-12T11:51:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T11:51:24","slug":"lions-of-the-great-war-statue-vandalised-less-than-a-week-since-its-unveiling-in-smethwick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/12\/lions-of-the-great-war-statue-vandalised-less-than-a-week-since-its-unveiling-in-smethwick\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions of The Great War Statue Vandalised less than a week since its unveiling in Smethwick"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is believed graffiti was smeared across the ten foot bronze statue on Thursday night. Vandalism of the new\u00a0Lions of the Great War\u00a0monument in\u00a0Smethwick\u00a0has been criticized by a leading Sikh as \u2018a despicable and cowardly act\u2019. Graffiti has been removed and CCTV images are being investigated.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The statue was only unveiled last Sunday, November 4th \u2013 a week before the Day of National Remembrance services to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One at 11am on Sunday, November 11th 2018.<\/p>\n

Sikhs had fought alongside the British Indian Army and made up 20 per cent of the Army, and two per cent of the Indian population at the time.<\/p>\n

It stands outside the\u00a0Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick, which had commissioned it to acknowledge soldiers of all faiths from the Indian subcontinent who fought for Britain in both world wars.<\/p>\n

The statue is close to the Smethwick Rolfe Street Station and sits on a six foot granite plinth between High Street and Tollhouse Way.<\/p>\n

The words \u2018Sepoys no more\u2019 were added while a thick black line was drawn through the words \u2018Great War\u2019.<\/p>\n

The word Sepoy was a term used in the British Indian Army for a soldier.<\/p>\n

The graffiti has since been removed but West Midlands Police is treating the vandalism as criminal damage.<\/p>\n

Guru Nanak Gurdwara president Jatinder Singh said he was \u2018extremely disappointed\u2019 but \u2018remained resolute\u2019.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Mr Singh said: \u201cThere was some vandalism to the back wall overnight which is disappointing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe graffiti was cleaned off and the matter reported to the police.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with the council, we won’t allow this vandalism to undermine the very strong message created by this new monument and the overwhelmingly positive reaction to its unveiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes this incident particularly distressing, is the complete disregard and lack of respect for the significance of the statue and inscriptions installed recently to commemorate the losses felt by many South Asian families who lost their dear ones during the First World War and to mark 100 years since the end of the Great War.\u201d<\/p>\n

GNG Smethwick was recently named alongside Stonehenge in Historic England’s list of\u00a0top ten places of faith and belief.<\/p>\n

It is assessing the CCTV ready to \u2018take the necessary action\u2019 and said it would advise anyone who witnesses vandalism or any other anti-social behaviour taking place to report any incidents to police as soon as possible using 101.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is believed graffiti was smeared across the ten foot bronze statue on Thursday night. Vandalism of the new\u00a0Lions of the Great War\u00a0monument in\u00a0Smethwick\u00a0has been criticized by a leading Sikh as \u2018a despicable and cowardly act\u2019. Graffiti has been removed and CCTV images are being investigated. The statue was only unveiled last Sunday, November 4th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,37,3,112],"tags":[1676,1686,1688,892,1687],"class_list":["post-27655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-guru-nanak-gurdwara","tag-lions-of-the-great-war-statue","tag-sikh-soldier","tag-smethwick","tag-vandalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}