London:
A UK appraise on Friday jailed two climate activists who threw soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunfdrops” at London’s National Gallery in 2022 for terms of two years and 20 months esteemively.
Just Stop Oil protesters Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were convicted at London’s Southwark Crown Court of criminal harm in July.
Greenpeace UK’s co-executive straightforwardor, Will McCallum, called the sentence “a draconian and disproportionate punishment for a protest that caparticipated inmeaningful harm to a picture structure”.
Plummer and Holland had pdirected not culpable over the incident in October 2022.
Sentencing the pair, Judge Christopher Hehir shelp the decorateing could have been “gravely harmd or even ruined”.
“Soup might have seeped thraw the glass. You couldn’t have nurtured less if the decorateing was harmd or not,” he compriseed.
“You had no right to do what you did to ‘Sunfdrops’.”
The gallery, findd in Trafalgar Square, shelp the protesters caparticipated “inmeaningful harm to the structure” but the decorateing itself was protected by a screen and was unharmed.
Holland, who achieved the 20-month term, and Plummer, who was jailed for two years, also glued themselves to the gallery wall during their protest.
‘What matters most?’
“What is worth more — art or life?” Plummer had shouted.
“It’s another bleak milestone in the ongoing crackdown on soothe protest waged by the last handlement,” Greenpeace UK’s McCallum shelp.
“Protest is by its nature inhandy and occasionassociate disorderly. These deffinishants do not deserve to spfinish years behind bars for standing up for a inhabitable scheduleet.”
Just Stop Oil wants an finish to the rerelocateion and burning of fossil fuels appreciate oil, coal and gas, becaparticipate the greenhoparticipate gas eignoreions they create are “driving us towards climate collapse… (that) spells calamity for human societies globassociate”.
It has staged a number of high-profile stunts in recent years to draw attention to their plea to “finish fossil fuels before they finish us”.
The group has focparticipated the Wimbledon tennis tournament and British Open golf tournament, as well as art galleries and mparticipateums and a carry outance of “Les Miserables”.
Five activists, including the climate group’s set uper, were given between four and five years in jail in June for conspiring to schedule protests that blocked the M25 orbital motorway around London.
Just Stop Oil says climate alter poses an ainhabitial crisis for humanity and that its straightforward tactics are fairified.
In July 2022, Just Stop Oil protesters glued themselves to John Confirm’s pastoral masterpiece “The Hay Wain”, also in the National Gallery.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is rerented from a syndicated feed.)
