U.K. Just Stop Oil climate activists seek reduction of prison sentences over

London — Sixteen environmental activists who were jailed for actions including stopping traffic, blocking an oil facility and splashing a van Gogh painting with soup went to a London court Wednesday to challenge their sentences. The Just Stop Oil protesters say they received unduly harsh prison terms — between 15 months and five years — for disruptive but peaceful actions.

The group argues that the jailed protesters are “political prisoners” who were “acting in self-defense and to protect our families and communities.”

Environmental organizations Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace U.K. are backing the appeals of five of the protesters, who were jailed for planning November 2022 demonstrations that saw protesters climb gantries above a busy highway that encircles London, snarling traffic for hours.

Other appellants were jailed for digging and occupying tunnels under the road leading to an oil terminal in southeast England and throwing soup onto the protective glass over van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery.

The Conservative government that lost power in July 2024 toughened anti-protest laws in response to eco-activists who blocked roads and bridges, glued themselves to trains, splattered artworks with paint, sprayed buildings with fake blood and doused athletes in orange powder to draw attention to climate change. In June members of the group sprayed some of the massive stones of the Stonehenge site with orange paint. 

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The government said the laws prevented extremist activists from hurting the economy and disrupting daily life.

Friends of the Earth said the sentences posed a “serious threat to our democracy.”

“Silencing those striving for a better world will not make these escalating crises disappear — doing so only serves to stifle our democracy,” the group’s senior lawyer Katie de Kauwe said.

The Court of Appeal hearing is scheduled to last two days, with the three judges likely to hand down their ruling several days or weeks later.

CBS News’ partner network BBC News reported Wednesday that the activists had gained the support of the great-granddaughter of one of Britain’s most iconic crusaders for equal rights, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Pankhurst was among the early leaders of the suffrage movement that eventually won women the right to vote in the U.K. in the early 20th century.  

Her great-granddaughter Helen Pankhurst, who is also a campaigner for gender equality, compared the climate activists actions to those of the suffragettes of a century ago.

“Environmental activists today stand in the same tradition,” Pankhurst said, according to the BBC. “I have no doubt future generations around the world will thank them for their campaigns.”