A pair of climate activists who threw soup at a Vincent van Gogh painting were handed sentences of 2 years and 20 months, respectively, by a London court on Friday.
The painting, called Sunflowers, was first painted in 1888 by Van Gogh. The version targeted by the activists was largely unharmed except for damage to its frame.
The activists, Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were from the protest group Just Stop Oil, a U.K.-based climate group that aims to stop all fossil fuel production by 2030.
“Our governments must work together to establish a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 as well as supporting and financing poorer countries to make a fast, fair, and just transition,” the group’s website says.
Judge Christopher Hehir scolded them, saying the “cultural treasure” could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed” by their actions.
“Soup might have seeped through the glass. You couldn’t have cared less if the painting was damaged or not,” he said in court. “You had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers.”
Plummer received an additional three-month sentence for participating in a 2023 “slow march” that caused traffic delays in London.
“You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel
like it. You do not,” the judge said.
Hehir and the United Kingdom have been criticized for passing on seemingly harsh prison sentences to climate activists in the recent past, helped by new laws that empower police to crack down on protests.
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Plummer, who is being handed the harsher of the two’s prison sentences, preached defiantly in the face of jail time.
“My choice today is to accept whatever sentence I receive with a smile,” Plummer said. “It is not just myself being sentenced today or my co-defendants but the foundations of democracy itself.”
