These activists were jailed for throwing soup on a Van Gogh. Hours later, their group did it again.

Two young climate activists shocked the world in October 2022 when they flung cans of tomato soup over the renowned painting “Sunflowers” by Vincent van Gogh.

Now, Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, have been sentenced to jail – part of a new crackdown on the radical climate protests that have swept the world in the past few years. Plummer was given two years; Holland got 20 months.

“I made my choices and I’m happy with them,” Plummer said Friday during the sentencing phase of the trial. “I’ve found peace in acting on my conscience.”

Just hours later, three protesters wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts threw soup on two other Van Gogh paintings at the National Gallery in London. “There are people in prison for demanding an end to new oil and gas,” one of the protesters shouted in a video posted to social media. Other museum visitors gasped and cried “No!”

The October 2022 protest by the U.K.-based activist group Just Stop Oil sparked a number of copycat actions in Britain and around the globe. Shortly afterward, climate protesters in Germany flung mashed potatoes on a Claude Monet painting; this summer, a 66-year-old activist disrupted a tennis match at Wimbledon and activists threw powder-based paint onto a standing stone at Stonehenge.

The disruptions have made Just Stop Oil a household name in Britain – and sparked backlash from residents.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak called them “eco-zealots,” and judges have cracked down on the activists in recent court cases.

In one case from 2022, activists climbed onto gantries over the M25, one of the busiest motorways in the country. Five of them were sentenced to four to five years in jail, thought to be the longest sentences given in Britain for a nonviolent protest.

In the “Sunflowers” case, both Plummer and Holland said during trial that jail time would not deter them from continuing to push for climate action.

Prosecutors argued that the activists only narrowly avoided damaging the painting – and that they caused up to 10,000 pounds, or $13,400, in damage to the 17th-century Italian frame surrounding it.

“The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure,” said Christopher Hehir, the judge. “That must be reflected in the sentences I pass.”

Hehir also presided over the M25 case.

“Protest is by its nature inconvenient and occasionally messy,” Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. “This is a draconian and disproportionate punishment for a protest that caused minor damage to a picture frame and none to the actual canvas.”

Experts are divided on the effectiveness of such protests for climate awareness. Some have pointed to research that shows that radical tactics are seen as less effective by the broader public. Others have argued that new and creative tactics attract media attention and conversation.

Presiding judges have largely criticized protesters for taking the fight against climate change – whether it disrupts others’ lives or not – into their own hands. Activists have countered that their protests are part of living in an active democracy.

“You have appointed yourself as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change,” Hehir said in the M25 case, “bound neither by the principles of democracy or the rule of law.”