Jurist Italy environmental activists to pay damages to Vatican after gluing their hands to ancient statute

[Dadparvar]

The Tribunal of Vatican City State ordered two Italian activists Monday to pay 28,148 euros in restitution for the damages caused by their protest.

The court found that two members of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation), Guido Viero and Ester Goffi, damaged the base of the Gruppo del Laocoonte (Laocoön Group) statute inside the Vatican Museum, resulting in incalculable damage. Viero and Goffi expressed that they intended to mitigate harm by attaching their hands to the marble base instead of the actual statute itself. But the court found that the base was an integral part of the statue.

Believed to have been carved in 40-30 B.C., the statute is extremely valuable, and the restoration alone is estimated to cost 3,148 euros. In addition to restitution of over 28,000 euros, both Viero and Goffi have been given a nine month suspended sentence and fined 1,620 euros each.

Ultima Generazione is an Italian environmental activist group focused on eliminating the use of fossil fuels. In a recent protest, Viero and Goffi glued their hands to the base of the Gruppo del Laocoonte (Laocoön Group) statute inside the Vatican Museum while holding a banner that read “Last Generation: no gas and no carbon.” After removing the pair from the statute, officials reported that the protest had done considerable damage to the statute.

In their statement following the protest, Ultima Generazione described the myth of Laocoon, a Trojan priest whose warnings to his people against the Athenians went unheard, resulting in destruction. Ultima Generazione urged that the warnings against climate change must be heeded or the world may suffer a similar fate. They said:

This crisis is real and tangiblelike the block of marble to which the two people have glued themselves, and it is already causing destruction, suffering, mourning. It forces entire peoples to hunger, thirst, exodus from once fertile lands, transformed into deserts by global warming . Yet the political class doesn’t care, because it depends on who makes immoral and criminal profits from this robbery economy.

Ultima Generazione called Viero and Goffi’s sentences exaggerated, comparing the court’s sentence to the small amount of glue used to cause the damage.

The post Italy environmental activists to pay damages to Vatican after gluing their hands to ancient statute appeared first on JURIST - News.

Continue reading...

Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.