This time, the thousand-year-old stones weren’t protected by glass. After having, to make their calls for heard, sprayed with numerous substances quite a few work underneath glass, signed by artists equivalent to Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh, the environmental activists who’re followers of “cultural” actions (which have multiplied since 2022) have simply reached a milestone by immediately attacking an internationally famend prehistoric web site, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Web site. On Wednesday June 19, two activists from the “Simply Cease Oil” group sprayed an orange product on the well-known megalithic monument of Stonehenge, UK. Mysterious alignments of stones erected by our ancestors between 3,000 and 1,100 BC…
Pictures of the motion, which was filmed, are as spectacular as they’re disturbing for heritage defenders: towards a backdrop of cries of shocked guests, the menhirs and triliths (a horizontal stone positioned on two vertical stones), a few of that are greater than 7 meters excessive, are out of the blue there attacked by two folks utilizing hearth extinguishers, regardless of the intervention of a girl making an attempt to interrupt them. First surrounded by massive orange clouds just like plumes of smoke (evoking each tear fuel and a up to date artwork efficiency impressed by Holi powder throwing in India), a number of monoliths then appeared stained with massive spots of colour lengthy reside.
A name for a “megalithic” motion plan
Two Simply Cease Oil activists at StonehengeJune 19, 2024
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The 2 British activists, Rajan Naidu, 73, and Niamh Lynch, 21 and a scholar at Oxford, have been arrested by the police. By this act, they requested the authorities for “megalithic” motion plan for the planettogether with the signing of a “legally binding treaty to section out fossil fuels by 2030”.
“Persevering with to burn coal, oil and fuel will result in the deaths of tens of millions of individuals,” they warn in a press release revealed on their web site, including that “stone circles” like that of Stonehenge are a image of human cooperation that they’re ready to avoid wasting the Earth. The motion was deliberately carried out in the midst of the British election marketing campaign and the eve of the summer time solsticean enormous day very fashionable with vacationers at Stonehenge, for the reason that rising and setting solar seems exactly within the framing of the stones, accompanied by rituals.
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Reactions between incomprehension and condemnation
“We can not perceive how anybody claiming to care in regards to the atmosphere might wish to injury such a monument, inflicting ache and fear to folks world wide.”
“That is clearly very upsetting. Our consultants are assessing the extent of the injury. The location stays open to the general public,” the directors of the Stonehenge web site first reacted through the latter’s official account on the social community X (previously Twitter). British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak strongly condemned this gesture, which he described as “shameful act of vandalism towards one of many oldest and most essential monuments in the UK and the world.”
“We can not perceive how anybody claiming to care in regards to the atmosphere might wish to assault such a monument, by inflicting ache and fear to folks world wide, together with to folks for whom Stonehenge has religious significance,” additionally commented, quoted by the BBC, one of many representatives of the English Heritage groupon which the well-known set of thousand-year-old stones relies upon.
“Is there nothing sacred within the eyes of those eco-clowns? », reacted strongly on X, this Thursday morning, June 20, an account of Stonehenge lovers, who’ve posted every day data on the monument since 2009. “Stonehenge is protected by the Historical Monuments Act. Damaging it’s a felony offense. There are additionally many uncommon species of lichens rising on stones, that are additionally protected. Anticipate a jail sentence,” they posted angrily on June 19.
Additionally learn: Hammer assault on Velázquez’s “Venus within the Mirror” by environmental activists
Injury which “might have been important”
Of their press launch, the activists assert, nevertheless, that the product sprayed just isn’t paint however “orange cornstarch”, which based on them would wash away with out injury “with the rain”. After inspecting the affected menhirs, English Heritage consultants delivered their verdict this Thursday afternoon. The BBC certainly stories that “orange paint” has “was eliminated utilizing a ‘specialist hand fan'”. English Heritage additionally specified to the British media that “if the rain had come into contact with the powder, the injury might have been important”. A declaration which subsequently contradicts what the activists had assured us, whereas luckily reassuring us in regards to the state of those legendary stones, milestones within the historical past of humanity…
Additionally learn: Museums and ecology: a serious turning level?
