Two Belgian local weather change activists who final week focused the Johannes Vermeer portray Woman with a Pearl Earring have been sentenced to 2 months in jail by a Dutch court docket, of which one month was suspended.
One activist glued his head to glass protecting the portray at a museum in The Hague. The art work was not broken, gallery employees mentioned.
The protesters mentioned their motion was meant to focus on how seeing art work destroyed evoked an identical feeling to seeing the planet destroyed.
However the prosecutor mentioned: “An art work hanging there for all of us to take pleasure in has been smeared by defendants who felt their message took priority over the whole lot else.”
The general public prosecutor requested for a four-month sentence, with two months suspended, however the decide mentioned she didn’t need her sentence to discourage different folks from demonstrating.
The 2 males went to trial by means of a fast-track course of on prices of destruction and open violence towards the portray. A 3rd activist, who didn’t agree with the trial being fast-tracked, will seem in court docket on Friday.
All three are a part of Simply Cease Oil Belgium, which isn’t affiliated with Simply Cease Oil in Britain.
Simply Cease Oil Belgium mentioned after the decision: “Isn’t it ironic that local weather activists who nonviolently oppose the mass slaughter of life on Earth are being condemned?”