A British judge on Friday jailed two climate activists who threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery in 2022, sentencing them to two years and 20 months respectively.
Just Stop Oil protesters Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were convicted of criminal damage at Southwark Crown Court in London in July.
Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, called the sentence “a harsh and disproportionate punishment for a protest that caused minor damage to a picture frame”.
Plummer and Holland have pleaded not guilty to the incident that occurred in October 2022.
Sentencing the pair, Judge Christopher Hehir said the painting “could have been seriously damaged or even destroyed”.
He said, “The soup might have seeped through the glass. You didn’t care if the painting was damaged or not.”
“You had no right to do what you did to ‘Sunflower.’
The gallery, based in Trafalgar Square, said protesters “caused minor damage to the frame” but the painting was protected by a screen and suffered no damage.
Holland, who received a 20-month sentence, and Plummer, who was jailed for two years, also pinned themselves to the gallery wall during their protest.
‘What matters most?’
“What is more valuable – art or life?” Plummer shouted.
Greenpeace UK’s McCallum said, “This is another serious milestone in the ongoing crackdown on peaceful protests undertaken by the previous government.”
“Protests are by their very nature uncomfortable and sometimes dirty. These defendants do not deserve to spend years behind bars while standing up for a livable planet.”
Just Stop Oil seeks to end the extraction and burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, because the greenhouse gas emissions they produce are “leading us to climate collapse… (which) will But it causes disaster for human society”.
In recent years it has staged a number of high-profile stunts to draw attention to its plea to “abolish fossil fuels before they kill us”.
The group has targeted the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the British Open golf tournament, as well as art galleries and museums and screenings of “Les Miserables.”
Five activists, including the climate group’s founder, were given four to five years in jail in June for planning protests that blocked the M25 orbital motorway around London.
Just Stop Oil says climate change poses an existential crisis to humanity and its direct strategy is justified.
In July 2022, Just Stop Oil protesters affixed themselves to John Constable’s pastoral masterpiece “The Hay Wain” in the National Gallery.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
