Great Britain | Prison for dousing a Van Gogh painting with soup

The imposition of prison sentences of 22 months and 2 years on young environmental activists who threw soup on a famous Van Gogh painting reflects a major repressive shift in Britain that is echoed in many Western countries.

“These sentences are ridiculous. This is the result of the overreaction of elected officials and judges to the disruption caused by activists who seek, through spectacular actions, to draw attention to the ongoing climate catastrophe,” notes Brad Adams, who heads Climate Rights International.

In the case in question, the table of the series of Sunflowerspainted in 1888, suffered no significant damage, being protected by glass, a fact of which the activists were aware.

The magistrate in the case nevertheless underlined, in pronouncing their sentence a week ago, that they had come “one window close” to destroying the painting. He added that their action was “extreme, disproportionate and criminally idiotic”.

Phoebe Plummer, one of the activists from the Just Stop Oil organization responsible for the 2022 action in London, pleaded, unsuccessfully, that she had wanted to “peacefully disrupt” an “unjust” and “murderous” system. fueling ongoing global warming.

Mr. Adams notes that the English government has passed laws in recent years that limit the right to protest and make it easier to suppress acts of civil disobedience linked to the crisis.

They give, he said, great latitude to magistrates, allowing the imposition of severe penalties which aim to discourage any form of repeat offense or imitation.

“They want to scare, but it’s not going to work. The problem posed by global warming is too big, people will continue to demonstrate to demand that governments act,” says Mr. Adams.

Similar acts

Three other Just Stop Oil activists illustrated the situation by reproducing the gesture of the two convicted activists on the same day their sentences were announced.

Other environmentalists have faced the wrath of the courts in recent years for similar actions.

In the United States, two environmental activists who sprayed paint on the glass case protecting a sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington have faced serious criminal charges.

Joanna Smith was sentenced in April to 60 days in jail, 24 months of probation and 150 hours of community service. She cannot go to Washington for two years.

Director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, who is an activist within the Mothers at the Front organization, thinks that the sentence imposed on the two Just Stop Oil activists seems “dramatically severe” and “completely out of step” in relation to the seriousness of the climate crisis. that they wanted to denounce.

Rather than dealing with the underlying problem, too many commentators have limited themselves to denouncing the gesture, which, she says, is part of a long line of acts of social protest centered on art.

“Attract attention”

In everyday life The Guardianone of the founders of the Pussy Riot group, Nadejda Tolokonnikova, came to the defense of the two Just Stop Oil activists, noting that Van Gogh himself would undoubtedly have welcomed the use of his art to “raise uncomfortable questions “.

Louis Ramirez, a French-born environmental activist who has experimented with different mobilization strategies, thinks it is “atrocious” that two young activists are forced to serve prison sentences for their actions.

This type of “shock action,” he says, aims to make people feel challenged to take a stand and get involved. Surveys carried out to assess the impact of the approach, however, suggest that it does not produce the desired result.

M^me Barbeau-Lavalette thinks that “all ways of drawing attention” to the seriousness of the environmental crisis are valid at the moment when “everyone is burying their heads in the sand.”

“You need a diversity of strategies and I wouldn’t cancel any of them. I think what these young women did is courageous, much more than criticism and apathy,” she concludes.