Two climate activists charged in Stonehenge powder paint protest

On Thursday, British authorities charged a pair of climate change activists for vandalizing Stonehenge, a prehistoric megalithic structure on a chalk plateau known as the Salisbury Plain.

Authorities are charging Just Stop Oil’s Rajan Naidu, 73, of Gosford Street, Birmingham, and Niamh Lynch, 20, of Norfolk Road, Bedford, with destroying or damaging an ancient protected monument, and intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance following the incident. Naidu and Lynch are accused of spraying orange powder paint on the iconic monuments on June 19th. The pair are due to appear in the Salisbury Magistrates’ Court on December 13th for their initial hearing.

“Thankfully, there appears to be no visible damage but that’s in no way saying there hasn’t been harm, from the very act of having to clean the stones to the distress caused to those for whom Stonehenge holds a spiritual significance,” said English Heritage chief executive Nick Merriman told CNN.

Naidu and Lynch are not the first activists from Just Stop Oil to go through the British penal system. Activist Roger Hallam is serving a 5-year-sentence for blocking traffic on London’s M25 in 2022. Speaking with Salon last month, Hallam argued that because we burn so many fossil fuels that overheat the planet, we’re in a “complete crisis of the whole basis of how we make decisions, and the short-termism and the irrationality and immorality of those decisions.”

Another Just Stop Oil spokesman, climate scientist Alex De Koning, told Salon in February that “if any of us are to survive the climate crisis, things need to change. However, fossil fuel companies and those in power who thrived out of the broken system that has got us into this mess refuse to [change.] They are fighting to keep themselves on top and using their considerable wealth and influence to repress any who take them on.”

Stonehenge is believed to have been constructed during the prehistoric era. It is composed of sarsens and bluestones, all of them aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice.