Two members of Italy's Ultima
Generazione civil disobedience group on Thursday sprayed orange
paint over the equestrian statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II in
Milan's Piazza Duomo in the latest of a series of actions aiming
to highlight the need to combat the climate crisis.
The activists were rapidly stopped and taken away by Carabinieri
police.
Ultima Generazione said the action was staged to highlight the
Italian State's ongoing investments in fossil fuels, which are
the driving force of the greenhouse-gas emissions causing global
heating.
"The Italian government invested 41.8 billion euros in the
extraction of fossil fuels in 2021 alone," said Ultima
Generazione, which uses easy-to-wash-off paint for its actions
of this kind.
"We demand that this mountain of money be immediately taken from
fossil fuels and invested in a just ecological transition, with
measures that benefit citizens' health and the future of young
generations".
UG have staged many similar protests, including splashing paint
over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house
in Milan and sticking themselves to Botticelli's Spring at the
Uffizi and the Laocoon statue in the Vatican, as well as
blocking the Mt Blanc Tunnel, throwing flour over an Andy Warhol
car in Milan, and throwing soup onto a Van Gogh in Rome.
A Vatican trial for the activists involved in the Laocoon-statue
stunt opened on Thursday.
UG is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience
groups active in several countries, such as Just Stop Oil in the
UK, Stop Old Growth in Canada, France's Derniere Renovation and
Declare Emergency in the United States.
"We won't pay for fossil fuels," said Riccardo, one of the
protestors involved in Thursday's action, referring to public
money being invested in fossil fuels.
"Is throwing paint over a statue scandalous?
"I say that the real scandal is the government's absolute
indifference to our lives, which the climate crisis will destroy
and is already destroying".
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