Two climate protesters who sprayed orange paint on the ancient Stonehenge monument in southern England were arrested on Wednesday after two bystanders appeared to intervene and stop them.
The latest act by Just Stop Oil was quickly condemned by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “disgraceful act of vandalism.”
Labour leader Keir Starmer, Sunak’s main opponent in the election next month, called the group “pathetic” and said the damage was “outrageous.”
Photo: Just Stop Oil via AP
The incident came just a day before thousands are expected to gather at the roughtly 4,500-year-old stone circle to celebrate the summer solstice — the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
English Heritage, which manages the site, said it was “extremely upsetting” and curators were investigating the damage.
Just Stop Oil said the paint was made of cornstarch and would dissolve in the rain.
Video released by the group showed a man it identified as Rajan Naidu, 73, unleash a fog of orange from a fire extinguisher-style paint sprayer at one of the vertical stones.
As voices can be heard yelling “stop,” a person wearing a cap and raincoat ran up and grabbed Naidu’s arm and tried to pull him away from the monument. A man in a blue shirt joined in and wrestled the paint-sprayer away.
The second protester, identified as Niamh Lynch, 21, managed to spray three stones before the first bystander in the hat stopped her.
Wiltshire police said the pair were arrested on suspicion of damaging one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in stages starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period about 2500 BC.
Just Stop Oil is one of many environmental groups around Europe that have received attention — and blowback — for disrupting sporting events, splashing paint and food on famous works of art, and interrupting traffic to draw attention to global warming.
The group said it acted in response to the Labour Party’s election manifesto.
Labour has said that if it wins the election on July 4, it would not issue further licenses for oil and gas exploration.
Just Stop Oil backs the moratorium, but said it is not enough.
In a statement, the group said Labour, which is leading in polls and widely expected by pundits and politicians to lead the next government, needs to go further and sign a treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.
“Continuing to burn coal, oil and gas will result in the death of millions,” the group said in a statement.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver