Official
Statement by Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy Sunday August 19th,
14:30 BST
(This
version has been proofed)
I am here
because I cannot be closer to you.
Thank you
for being here.
Thank you
for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.
On Wednesday
night after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on the
building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it and you
brought the world’s eyes with you.
Inside the
embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming into the building
through the internal fire escape.
But I knew
that there would be witnesses.
And that is
because of you.
If the UK
did not throw away the Vienna Conventions the other night, it is
because the
world was watching.
And the
world was watching because you were watching.
The next
time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend the rights
we hold
dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark outside the Embassy of Ecuador, and
how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous
Latin American nation took a stand for justice.
And so, to
those brave people:
I thank President
Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and
granting me
political asylum.
And so I
thank the government and the Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patio, who have upheld
the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration
of my case.
And to the
Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending their
constitution.
And I have a
debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy whose families
live in
London and who have shown me hospitality and kindness despite the threats that
they have received.
This Friday
there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of
Latin
America in Washington D.C. to address this situation.
And so I am
grateful to the people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico,
Nicaragua,
Peru, Venezuela and to all other Latin American countries who
have come to
the defence of the right to asylum.
To the
people of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and
Australia
who have supported me in strength while their governments have not. And to
those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice. Your day
will come.
To the
staff, supporters and sources of WikiLeaks whose courage, commitment and loyalty
have seen no equal.
To my family
and to my children who have been denied their father: forgive me. We will be
reunited soon.
As WikiLeaks
stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of our
societies.
We must use
this moment to articulate the choice that is before the
government
of the United States of America.
Will it
return to and reaffirm the values it was founded on?
Or will it
lurch off the precipice dragging us all into a dangerous and
oppressive
world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of
prosecution
and citizens must whisper in the dark?
I say that
it must turn back.
I ask
President Obama to do the right thing.
The United
States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks.
The United
States must dissolve its FBI investigation.
The United
States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or
our
supporters.
The United
States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue
journalists
for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.
There must
be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media
organization,
be it WikiLeaks or the New York Times.
The US
administration’s war on whistle-blowers must end.
Thomas
Drake, William Binney, John Kirakou and the other heroic US
whistle-blowers
must - they must - be pardoned and compensated for the
hardships
they have endured as servants of the public record.
And the Army
Private who remains in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth Kansas, who was
found by the UN to have endured months of torturous detention in Quantico
Virginia and who has yet - after two years in prison - to see a trial, must be
released.
And if
Bradley Manning really did as he is accused, he is a hero, an
example to
us all and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.
Bradley
Manning must be released.
On
Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day in detention without
trial. The
legal maximum is 120 days.
On Thursday,
my friend, Nabeel Rajab, was sentenced to 3 years for a tweet.
On Friday, a
Russian band was sentenced to 2 years in jail for a political
performance.
There is
unity in the oppression.
There must
be absolute unity and determination in the response.
