Julian Assange’s Sunday speech at Ecuadorian Embassy in London
“On Wednesday
night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this
building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you
brought the world’s eyes with you. Inside this embassy, after dark, I could
hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire
escape.
“But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you. If the
U.K. 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.
“.…
As
WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health
of all 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, the revolutionary 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 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 be it the New York Times.…
“This Friday [August 24, 2012], there will be an emergency
meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington, D.C., to
address this very situation. And so─
I
am grateful to those people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru,
Venezuela, and to all other Latin American countries who have come out to
defend the right to asylum;
and
to the people of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia
who have supported me in strength, even when 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 and
commitment and loyalty has seen no equal. To my family and to my children, who
have been denied their father, forgive me, we will be reunited soon.…
Source
“End the WikiLeaks Witch Hunt: Julian Assange’s Full Address
from the Ecuadorean Embassy,” August 20, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/20/end_the_wikileaks_witch_hunt_julian
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with the words of WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange. On Sunday, he made his first public appearance since he
took refuge two months ago inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, just days after
he was granted asylum
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