The US embassy in Seoul has removed banners celebrating the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and gay pride after running afoul of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
The embassy on Saturday had unfurled a banner on the building reading “Black Lives Matter” in solidarity with the increasingly global movement that has emerged after the killing of African American George Floyd while in Minneapolis, Minnesota, police custody.
In a Facebook message on Saturday, the embassy said the banner “shows our support for the fight against racial injustice and police brutality as we strive to be a more inclusive & just society.”
Photo: AP
On Twitter, US Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris said he believed that from “diversity we gain our strength” and quoted former president John F. Kennedy.
Harris is Japanese-American and previously told embassy staff that he was “deeply troubled about the events surrounding the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the ongoing aftermath.”
“As an Asian American who was raised in the segregated South of the 1960s, I never thought I would see this happening again, especially in the 21st century,” he added in a message.
Photo: AFP
However, the BLM banner was taken down on Monday, with CNN quoting an anonymous source saying that the request to do so came from the office of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The embassy also removed a rainbow flag, a symbol of the LGBTQ equality movement — hours before a landmark US Supreme Court decision on Monday that outlawed discrimination against workers based on sexual orientation.
A huge banner commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Korean War yesterday covered the space previously occupied by the two emblems, featuring a black-and-white photograph of a bugler in a military cemetery and a message in Korean reading: “We don’t forget.”
The official explanation from the embassy, which did not mention the LGBT pride flag, was that the BLM banner was removed to avoid any perception that it was meant “to support or encourage donations to any specific organization.”
In a statement, an embassy spokesperson said the removal of the BLM banner “in no way lessens the principles and ideals expressed by raising the banner, and the embassy will look for other ways to convey fundamental American values in these times of difficulty at home.”
The decision drew criticism from some activists in Seoul — and speculation that Trump might have been responsible.
Lee Tae-ho, a member of the Seoul-based civic organization People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, called the abrupt banner removal regrettable, saying its presence was “a very positive thing that could improve the US image and help resolve the problem.”
“If the removal was really made because of pressure made by Trump ... I think what they did was unhelpful for the US,” Lee said.
Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who in the past has said that he defines marriage as between a man and a woman, last year restricted the flying of rainbow flags, as some embassies had been doing each June for Pride Month, which celebrates the movement for LGBTQ equality.
Trump and Pompeo have both condemned the killing of Floyd and spoken in general terms of the need to reform law enforcement.
Additional reporting by AP
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate