Two global warming protesters who threw cans of tomato soup over the glass frame of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflower” painting have been sentenced to time in prison for their actions.
On Friday, a London court sentenced Anna Holland, 22, and Phoebe Plummer, 23, from the activist group Just Stop Oil, to two years and 20 months in prison for their so-called protest against fossil fuels at a museum in London in 2022, CNN reported.
Both Holland and Plummer were found guilty of criminal damage to the pieces of art’s gold-colored frame. Judge Christopher Hehir blasted the two for their actions against the “cultural treasure,” which he said could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed” by them by throwing soup on the paintings and then glueing their hands to the museum wall. The “Sunflowers” painting is valued at nearly $85 million.
“Soup might have seeped through the glass. You couldn’t have cared less if the painting was damaged or not,” Hehir said in court. “You had no right to do what you did to ‘Sunflowers.’”
🥫 BREAKING: 3 YEARS 8 MONTHS COMBINED IN PRISON FOR THROWING SOUP
⛓️ Phoebe and Anna have just been sentenced to 2 years and 20 months in prison respectively after throwing soup over the glass frame of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’.
🚔 Phoebe received a further 3 months for… pic.twitter.com/JBjCgObiic
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) September 27, 2024
Plummer was also sentenced to an additional 3 months in prison for her part in a “slow march” in the road in October 2023 in London.
“You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it,” Hehir said. “You do not.”
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Shortly after the sentences were handed down, more vandals from the same protest group shared a clip of three peeople throwing cans of soup over the glass on not one but two Vincent Van Gogh paintings “in the ‘Poets and Lovers’ exhibition at the National Gallery,” per the post on X.
The London judge is the same person who handed down sentences in July to five other so-called climate activists in the U.K. from Just Stop Oil or its allied group, Extinction Rebellion.
The court found the vandals guilty of “conspiring intentionally to cause a public nuisance,” after it had recruited people to climb structures along the M25 — a major traffic route around London — in November 2022, the outlet noted.
Hehir sentenced four out of five of the activists to four-year jail terms, while the group’s co-founder, Roger Hallam, was handed a five year sentence.
Related: WATCH: Global Warming Protesters Vandalize One Of World’s Most Iconic Art Masterpieces
