After three years of climate activism, the British protest group Just Stop Oil announced on Thursday that it would end demonstrations directly targeting museums and public spaces in the country.
The group has become known for high-profile demonstrations that have involved throwing food at paintings by artists like Van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci in museums. But it will officially cease organizing those protests at the end of April.
Earlier this month, the UK adopted a law early this month that bars license for new oil and gas projects that haven’t already been approved, a change the eco-group had been pushing for in legal complaints. The policy change was announced earlier this month and confirmed by the UK’s energy secretary Ed Miliband, who said the decision was made to implement a new “clean energy future” plan.
Previous Just Stop Oil actions have included defacing Stonehenge and targeting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. The activists have claimed that each demonstration was carefully orchestrated to avoid permanent damage to cultural objects, and in most cases, the artworks were not permanently altered.
The protests have spurred some officials to take legal action against Just Stop Oil members. At the beginning of the month, Just Stop Oil convened outside a UK court to protest the sentencing of 16 activists arrested during demonstrations since 2022. On March 7, a UK judge shortened the sentence of the group’s founder, Roger Hallam, for disrupting a traffic event after an appeal.
Just Stop Oil said it plans to hold a final demonstration outside UK Parliament on April 26.
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