DISRUPT BURRUP HUB ACTIVIST FACES FRESH CHARGES

Joana Partyka was visited by police at her home on Monday. Credit: Supplied, Disrupt Burrup Hub.

An anti-Woodside activist was served with fresh charges on Monday over failure to obey a data access order. 

Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner Joana Partyka was previously convicted for criminal damage after spray-painting the Woodside Logo on a transparent plastic sheet covering Frederick McCubbin’s 1889 painting ‘Down on his Luck’ at the Art Gallery of Western Australia earlier this year. 

Ms Partyka said the new charges relate to a failure to provide passwords to her electronic devices to the WA police following that arrest. 

She said she feels like the victim of unjust persecution. 

“It’s definitely stressful, and I do feel like I’m being persecuted,” she said.

“I feel like this is another example in a pattern that we’re seeing around Australia, but especially emerging here in WA, where authorities are pursuing climate activists in a really heavy-handed way in an attempt to silence us and make us go away.”