Stonehenge monument painted orange, climate protesters arrested
LONDON (AP) — Two local weather protesters had been arrested Wednesday for spraying orange paint on the traditional Stonehenge monument in southern England, police stated.
The most recent act by Simply Cease Oil was rapidly condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “disgraceful act of vandalism.”
The incident got here only a day earlier than hundreds are anticipated to assemble on the 4,500-year-old stone circle to have a good time the summer season solstice — the longest day of the 12 months within the Northern Hemisphere.
English Heritage, which manages the location, stated it was “extraordinarily upsetting” and stated curators had been investigating the injury. Simply Cease Oil stated on the social media platform X that the paint was product of cornstarch and would dissolve within the rain.
Wiltshire Police stated the pair had been arrested on suspicion of damaging one of many world’s most well-known prehistoric monuments and a UNESCO World Heritage Website.
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. Among the stones, the so-called bluestones, are identified to have come from southwest Wales, almost 150 miles (240 kilometers) away, however the origins of others stay a thriller.
Simply Cease Oil is one in all many teams round Europe which have gained consideration — and obtained plenty of blowback — for disrupting sporting occasions, splashing paint and meals on well-known artworks and interrupting visitors to attract consideration to international warming.
The group stated it acted in response to the Labour Get together’s current election manifesto. Labour has stated if it wins the election on July 4, it could not difficulty additional licenses for oil and gasoline exploration. Simply Cease Oil backs the moratorium however stated it wasn’t sufficient.
In an announcement, the group stated Labour, which is main in polls and broadly anticipated by pundits and politicians to guide the subsequent authorities, must go additional and signal a treaty to section out fossil fuels by 2030.
“Persevering with to burn coal, oil and gasoline will outcome within the dying of thousands and thousands,” the group stated in an announcement.