Two protesters with Simply Cease Oil sprayed Stonehenge in England with orange powder paint on Wednesday, based on a video posted by the activist group on X.

The protesters, recognized as 21-year-old Oxford pupil Niamh Lynch and 73-year-old Birmingham man Rajan Naidu, had been arrested shortly after the motion after two bystanders apparently tried to cease them from throwing the paint.

The group mentioned in a press release that the motion was meant as name for the UK’s subsequent authorities to signal a “legally binding treaty to part out fossil fuels by 2030.” (The UK is about for its subsequent common election on July 4.)

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak known as the motion a “disgraceful act of vandalism,” whereas Keir Starmer, the top of the Labour Celebration and Sunak’s major electoral challenger, known as Simply Cease Oil “pathetic,” because the Related Press reported Wednesday.

In a press release posted to X, Naidu equally known as for a “Fossil Gasoline Non-Proliferation Treaty” and mentioned that the paint was “orange cornflour.”

“Both we finish the fossil gasoline period, or the fossil gasoline period will finish us,” Naidu mentioned. “Simply as fifty years in the past, when the world used worldwide treaties to defuse the threats posed by nuclear weapons, in the present day the world wants a Fossil Gasoline Non-Proliferation Treaty to part out fossil fuels and to assist dependent economies, staff and communities to maneuver away from oil, fuel and coal.”

The assertion continued, “The orange cornflour we used to create an eye catching spectacle will quickly wash away with the rain, however the pressing want for efficient authorities motion to mitigate the catastrophic penalties of the local weather and ecological disaster is not going to. Signal the treaty!”

English Heritage, the group that manages the monument, mentioned it was investigating the location for potential injury.

Michael Pitts, an archaeologist and skilled on Stonehenge, advised BBC that the megaliths “are delicate and they’re fully coated in prehistoric markings which stay to be absolutely studied and any floor injury to the stones is vastly regarding.”

The motion comes at some point earlier than the summer season solstice, when 1000’s sometimes collect on the monument to have a good time the longest day of the 12 months within the Northern hemisphere.

The motion is simply the newest by Simply Cease Oil and different associated teams.