Members of the environmental group Just Stop Oil sprayed orange paint in London on Monday on the facades of the Home Office, MI5 (domestic intelligence), the Bank of England and the headquarters of the News Corp media group.
“These buildings were chosen because they represent the pillars that support and maintain the power of the fossil fuel economy, government, security, finance and the media,” claimed Just Stop Oil, which campaigns for the immediate halt to any new oil or gas project, in a press release.
A total of eight people were arrested, police said.
“The age of fossil fuels should be long over, but the insidious ramifications of fossil fuel interests continue to corrupt our politics, government and the media as they have for decades,” a spokesperson said. of the group.
Among the sites targeted on Monday is the London headquarters of News Corp, the American group of Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch, which notably owns the reference daily in the United Kingdom. The Times and the tabloid The Sun.
The group’s British print shops were blocked in September 2020 by activists from the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, disrupting the distribution of newspapers.
Just Stop Oil has carried out a series of actions since the beginning of the month in the United Kingdom, where activists have put tar on the wax statue of King Charles at Madame Tussauds, thrown tomato soup on The sunflowers of Van Gogh at the National Gallery or spray paint an Aston Martin dealership.
Activists repeatedly blocked streets in London over the weekend and faced the wrath of motorists who sometimes forced them out.
A man and a woman, for example, shot activists to clear their way on Sunday while a motorist shouted at them that she had to pass because she had a sick child in her car.
On Saturday, a London police official, Matt Twist, had called on the public not to “intervene directly” to dislodge protesters.
He then announced that the police had made 651 arrests since 1er October and that the actions of Just Stop Oil had required 7900 shifts of members of the forces of order.