By Madeleine Kearns
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
Two “Just Stop Oil” vandals were arrested Monday after
smashing the glass of Diego Velázquez’s painting, “The Toilet of Venus” at the
National Gallery in London. They chose that painting because it had been
slashed by suffragettes in early 1914.
It turns out that the two zealots have had run-ins with
the law before. Hanan Ameur, 22, stormed a performance of Les
Misérables at the Sondheim Theatre, after which the show did not go
on, costing the theatre an estimated £80,000. Harrison Donnelly, 20, has been
charged with criminal damage to a building after he defaced the University of
Birmingham library with paint and handprints.
Criminal damage in the U.K. has a maximum sentence of ten
years’ imprisonment. The U.K. government’s website reads, “Where the damage
value is less than £5,000, the case must be tried summarily and attracts a
maximum sentence of 3 months’ imprisonment and, or a fine of up to £2,500.”
Given that the painting is worth tens if not hundreds of
millions of dollars if it suffered any damage from the protective glass being
smashed, the activists ought to be given the maximum sentence. This would be
justified even if they were first-time offenders. But considering their past
criminal behavior, the justification for maximum sentencing is even stronger.
Harsh sentences are the only way to deter these
hooligans.
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