NSW environmental activist Violet CoCo is set to face a Perth court for criminal damage after she allegedly sprayed a Woodside Energy logo on a police station.

May 4, 2023

High-profile NSW environmental activist Violet CoCo is expected to face court after spending the night behind bars after allegedly spray-painting a gas company’s logo on a Perth police station.

Deanna “Violet” Maree CoCo, 32, was charged with criminal damage or destruction of property after she allegedly used a stencil to paint four yellow Woodside Energy logos on the front windows of the Perth Police Centre on Wednesday.

CoCo is scheduled to appear in the Western Australian magistrates court on Thursday after she was arrested at the scene and denied police bail.

Activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub on Wednesday said CoCo’s actions at the police station were an act of solidarity with local campaigners targeted by police amid an escalating crackdown on protesters.

After the incident, CoCo said police “repression” of peaceful protest was rapidly escalating in WA in the same way she has repeatedly experienced in NSW.

“I am a survivor of the authoritarian crackdown on environmental protest on the east coast and I have come over to WA to sound the alarm and stand in solidarity with campaigners facing the same police state repression here,” she said in a statement.

The NSW District Court in March wiped Coco’s 15-month prison sentence for parking a truck on the Harbour Bridge and blocking a lane during morning peak traffic in April 2022, which was part of an environmental protest against climate inaction.

Coco was issued with a 12-month conditional release order after the court heard she had initially been imprisoned on false information from NSW Police.

She was among the first people charged after the NSW parliament hiked penalties and expanded the reach of laws targeting those who block traffic on major routes.

Disrupt Burrup Hub says environmental campaigners have been subject to increasing police overreach in recent months in response to a campaign targeting Woodside’s Burrup Hub project.

This has allegedly included house raids, data seizure and excessive charges after activists sprayed the Woodside logo on a famous Fredrick McCubbin painting at the WA Art Gallery and WA’s parliament building.

The group has called for industrial development on the Burrup Peninsula, about 30km west of Karratha in the Pilbara region, to be stopped, including Woodside Energy’s expansion of the Pluto gas plant.

The Burrup Peninsula, known as Murujuga to traditional owners, contains the largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs in the world.