Italy's Last Generation (Ultima Generazione - UG) group staged the latest in a series of acts of civil disobedience to highlight the need to tackle the climate crisis on Thursday when six protestors went topless and blocked traffic in central Rome.
The six sat down on a zebra crossing on the busy Via del Tritone
street leading to Piazza Barberini with "Stop Fossil" written on
their backs, holding a banner saying "We Won't Pay for Fossil
Fuels".
It is part of a campaign to stop public investment in, and
subsidies of, fossil fuels, the driving force of the greenhouse
emissions causing the climate crisis.
Police intervened to stop the protest.
In a statement, the group said that this week's deadly floods in
the northeastern region of Emilia Romagna were a dramatic
demonstration of how the climate crisis was having an impact on
people's lives.
"We go naked with our bodies, vulnerable like the planet," it
said.
Other protests have included splashing easy-to-wash-off paint
over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house
and the Vittorio Emanuele II statue 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.
Four activists have been indicted over the latter protest.
In March UG sprayed orange paint over the walls of Palazzo
Vecchio, the home of Florence's town hall, as part of the "We
Won't Pay for Fossil Fuels" campaign.
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella was hailed as a hero by some after
he rugby-tackled one of the activists involved and even lent a
hand with the clean-up operation.
In the light of such acts, the government has approved a
crackdown on art 'eco-vandals'.
The cabinet approved a bill regarding "the destruction,
dispersal, deterioration, disfiguring, and defacing for illicit
purposes of cultural and landscape heritage".
The bill, proposed by the Culture Ministry, envisages fines of
20-60,000 euros plus criminal sanctions for those who destroy
cultural heritage and other administrative sanctions, and of
10,000-40,000 euros, for those who deface monuments.
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.
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