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Please click here to see my photos of the vigil on Flickr.
On Thursday June 19, 2014, supporters of Julian Assange held a vigil outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge in London (just behind Harrods), which I attended and photographed.
Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief have been holding vigils almost every day since he walked into the embassy seeking political asylum on June 19, 2012. He feared that he would end up being extradited to the US from Sweden, where he is accused of sexual offences (claims which he denies), and his asylum claim was accepted by the government of Ecuador on August 16, 2012.
WikiLeaks’ work, exposing US crimes through documents released by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning — including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files — has, of course, been enormously influential, and I am pleased to have worked with WikiLeaks as a media partner on the release of the classified military files from Guantánamo in April 2011. For further information, see my ongoing project to analyze all the files.
To mark the anniversary, Julian Assange released the following statement (I have added the links at the end):
It is great to see people out to mark the 2nd year of all this.
The last 730 days have been intense, and the knowledge of your support — the daily vigils and the big rallies — have been really heartening to me. Thank you!
Truth has a habit of reasserting itself. It asserts itself in our resolve and our commitment. It may have been possible at one time to ignore the truth about why I am unable to leave this embassy.
We will see an end to this siege. But we will only see it when the US government, the UK government and the Swedish government, and other governments around the world follow Ecuador’s brave lead and commit to protecting WikiLeaks, its staff, and its sources, from unacceptable transgressions against freedom of expression.
I want to express my warm thanks to the government of Ecuador.
And now let’s take a moment to remember absent friends, and allies who are suffering for their beliefs and actions.
Remember:
Chelsea Manning
Jeremy Hammond
Godfried ‘Anakata’ Swartholm
Barrett Brown
The PayPal 14
Rudolf Elmer
Edward SnowdenRemember their courage and conviction — not just this day, but every day.
Two years since Assange’s arrival at the embassy, there may finally be progress on his case. As the Guardian reported the day before the anniversary, Jen Robinson, his lawyer in the UK, “told reporters that the legal challenge, which is due to be lodged with Swedish courts next Tuesday, was based on ‘new information gathered in Sweden.'” However, she “declined to give any further details until the filing had been made.”
The WISE Up Action website explained that “UK law regarding extradition has changed since UK courts ruled that Julian must be extradited,” adding that “if Sweden’s extradition request was before a UK court now, he could only be extradited if charged” — which he has not been.
As the Guardian also noted, “Assange and his legal advisers have always protested that were he to cooperate with the British and Swedish authorities, he would expose himself to an ongoing criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice. The DoJ is known to have opened a grand jury investigation” into WikiLeaks’ release of the documents.
The day before the anniversary, Assange called on Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, to drop the investigation. “It is against the stated principles of the US, and, I believe, the values supported by its people to have a four-year criminal investigation against a publisher,” he said, adding, “The on-going existence of that investigation produces a chilling effect not just to internet-based publishers but to all publishers.”
A link to the photos is also below:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.