(CNN) – Two climate activists in their early 20s were sentenced to prison by a London court on Friday for pouring soup on Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting during a protest against fossil fuels.
Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, from the protest group Just Stop Oil, were jailed for two years and 20 months respectively, according to PA Media.
These are the latest in a series of prison sentences handed down to climate activists in the UK for taking part in disruptive protests against the use of fossil fuels. Two relatively new and controversial laws have increased the powers of police and courts to suppress disruptive protests, even when they are peaceful.
The sentences appeared to do little to deter Just Stop Oil: hours after they were handed down, three more Just Stop Oil activists dumped soup on two more Van Gogh sunflower paintings in the Poets and Lovers exhibition at the National Gallery, the same location where the 2022 protests took place, according to the group.
The two activists sentenced on Friday were found guilty of criminal damage offenses for pouring the contents of two cans of tomato soup over the famous painting in October 2022, causing damage to the artwork’s gold frame.
They were also taped to the wall below the painting, in the National Gallery in London.
“Sunflowers,” valued at more than $84 million, was protected by glass, but protesters were accused of causing 10,000 pounds (more than $13,000) worth of damage to its gold frame.
Judge Christopher Hehir reprimanded Plummer and Holland in court Friday, saying “cultural heritage” could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed” by their actions.
“The soup could have leaked through the glass. “They didn’t care if the paint was damaged or not,” he said in court. “They had no right to do what they did to the ‘sunflowers’,” he added.
The judge handed Plummer an additional three-month sentence for his involvement in a “slow march,” a 2023 protest that caused traffic delays in west London.
“They clearly think that their beliefs give them the right to commit crimes whenever they feel like it. “It is not like that,” the judge said.
Hehir is the same judge who recently imposed multi-year prison sentences on five climate activists for their roles in disruptive protests. They were all from Just Stop Oil or its allied group, Extinction Rebellion.
Plummer, representing herself, told the court: “My choice today is to accept any sentence with a smile. “Not only am I, or my co-defendants, being sentenced today, but the very foundations of democracy.”
The UK government has been criticized for its laws designed to suppress disruptive protests by rights groups and the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michael Forst, who said the laws were being applied in a “punitive and repressive” manner. .
CNN’s Kara Fox contributed to this report.
