The Hollywood Cemetery has announced on Tuesday its plans on removal of a monument commemorating Confederate Veterans after hundreds of activists, have requested its removal and with some threatening vandalism.

This comes days after violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, over the removal of statue of confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee has triggered a national debate about similar monuments across the country.

Since 1925, the monument had stood tall in the confederate section of the cemetery, where more than 30 Confederate veterans and their families are buried. The cemetery authorities have said ,they will take down the statue within next 24 hours to the storage site, but the grave marks will remain.

This week, the cemetery has received more than 60 calls and emails from people requesting to remove the statue, said Tyler Cassity, the cemetery’s president and co-owner.

A change.org petition calling for its removal has drew more than 1300 signatures.On Tuesday, someone vandalized the granite boulder monument using a marker to write “NO” across its bronze plaque, said cassity.

He said that he reached out to the Long Beach Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the monuments and ultimately made a decision to take it down.

A spokeswomen of the organization said that “I was afraid to leave the statue overnight”, so we immediately decided to take it down until we decide what to do.

She also said, those who are calling for the removal of the statue are “erasing history”, “I don’t believe in slavery, no sane person these days will believe that today, but back then they did”.

She expressed her sorrow to those injured and killed in the violence in Virginia.

“We Weep for those people who are involved in all of the things that are going in our country- on both sides”. We find hatred in both White Supremacists and Black Live Matter, We all should come together and become one under USA, She said

Cassity has said that he was relieved with the group’s decision.

“I understood everyone’s frustration, but I really felt like it was not our right to remove the monument. It’s kind of against what we’re supposed to be doing there, preserving history”, cassity said.

He also said, “They made the right decision given how quickly it escalated and what’s happening right now in the country’.

By A.s