A French 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, calling the protest a political act to denounce deep-seated racism. Franco Lollia is on trial for spraying “state Negrophobia” in red paint on the pedestal of a statue outside parliament in Paris last June. The statue honours Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century royal minister who wrote rules governing slaves in France’s overseas colonies. Lollia told the court that, in his view, Colbert committed crimes against humanity. A worker from Paris’s City Hall cleans the statue of Jean-Baptiste Colbert in June 2020 (Thibault Camus/AP)