LONDON — Two local weather protesters have been arrested Wednesday for spraying orange paint on the traditional Stonehenge monument in southern England, police mentioned.
The most recent act by Simply Cease Oil was shortly condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “disgraceful act of vandalism.”
Video of the incident confirmed two folks operating in direction of the 4,500-year-old stone circle and spraying plumes of orange pigment as a 3rd particular person tried to cease them. A couple of stones have been smeared in orange.
In accordance with Simply Cease Oil’s web site, the pigment was made from an “orange cornflour” that might wash away within the rain.
The incident got here simply earlier than 1000’s have been anticipated to collect on the prehistoric website to have fun the summer season solstice — the longest day of the 12 months.
English Heritage, which manages the UNESCO World Heritage Website, mentioned it was “extraordinarily upsetting” and mentioned curators have been investigating the harm.
Wiltshire Police mentioned the pair have been arrested on suspicion of damaging one of many world’s most well-known prehistoric monuments.
Stonehenge was constructed on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in levels beginning 5,000 years in the past, with the distinctive stone circle erected within the late Neolithic interval about 2,500 B.C. A few of the stones, the so-called bluestones, are identified to have come from southwest Wales, almost 150 miles away, however the origins of others stay a thriller.
Simply Cease Oil is certainly one of many teams round Europe which have gained consideration — and obtained a number of blowback — for disrupting sporting occasions, splashing paint and meals on well-known artworks and interrupting site visitors to attract consideration to international warming.
The group mentioned it acted in response to the Labour Social gathering’s current election manifesto. Labour has mentioned if it wins the election on July 4, it will not challenge additional licenses for oil and gasoline exploration. Simply Cease Oil backs the moratorium however mentioned it wasn’t sufficient.
In an announcement, the group mentioned Labour, which is main in polls and extensively anticipated by pundits and politicians to guide the following authorities, must go additional and signal a treaty to section out fossil fuels by 2030.
“Persevering with to burn coal, oil and gasoline will end result within the dying of tens of millions,” the group mentioned in an announcement.
In accordance with the Simply Cease Oil web site the activists who sprayed the pigment have been Niamh Lynch, 21, a pupil from Oxford, and Rajan Naidu, 73, from Birmingham.