Two Belgian climate change activists who last week targeted the famous Johannes Vermeer painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” have been sentenced to two months in prison by the Dutch court, of which one month was suspended.
To highlight how seeing artwork destroyed evokes a similar feeling to seeing the planet destroyed, one activist glued his head to glass covering the world-famous painting at a museum in The Hague, though the artwork was not damaged, gallery staff said. [bold, links added]
“An artwork hanging there for all, for all of us, to enjoy, has been smeared by defendants who felt their message took precedence over everything else,” the prosecutor said
The public prosecutor had asked for four months of which two were suspended, but the judge said she did not want her sentence to discourage other people to demonstrate.
The two men went to trial through a fast-track judgment on charges of destruction and open violence against the painting.
A third activist, who did not agree with the trial being fast-tracked, will appear in court on Friday.
All three are part of the climate group Just Stop Oil Belgium, which is not affiliated with Just Stop Oil in Britain. Just Stop Oil Belgium said the verdict was “ironic”.
“Isn’t it ironic that climate activists who nonviolently oppose the mass slaughter of life on Earth are being condemned?”, the group said in an email.
h/t RO
Read more at Reuters
These clowns should be “enticed” into revealing who is paying them. I don’t for a second believe that all of a sudden there are scores of eco-terrorists gluing themselves to priceless art, critical infrastructure and well used thoroughfares on their own time and their own dime.
They should have been made to wipe the floor with their stupid Just Stop Oil T-Shirts then made them picking up a mess after one of their stupid Earth Day Celebrations
The f@cking leftist judge is the problem. They are not protesters. They are human garbage , vandals.
They should go to prison for at least a couple of years.