The Four Fathers Release ‘Warriors (Freedom Version)’, Marking Julian Assange’s 50 Days as a Free Man
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Thursday August 15 marked 50 days since Julian Assange landed in Australia as a free man, after five years in HMP Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in south east London, fighting his proposed extradition to the US for publishing — with some of the world’s most prestigious newspapers — classified US files leaked by Chelsea Manning. Prior to his time in Belmarsh, he had spent nearly seven years confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, where he had successfully sought asylum in June 2012, until his asylum was abruptly withdrawn in May 2019.
To mark the occasion, The Four Fathers have released ‘Warriors (Freedom Version)’, an amended version of our song ‘Warriors’, about Julian and Chelsea, which we first released in February, with the last two lines changed to celebrate Julian’s 50 days of freedom.
In the original, I sang that the price of Julian’s actions was “Extradition and life imprisonment and the end of the freedom of the press”, while the new version changes that to “Five years fighting extradition in Belmarsh until a plea deal set him free” — the plea deal that he signed in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Commonwealth in the Pacific, prior to his arrival back in Australia on June 26, where he was reunited with his wife and his sons.
Photos and Report: The Phenomenal Success of the Human Chain for WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Around the UK Parliament
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Yesterday was a great day for activism, as at least 5,000 people turned up to form a Human Chain around Parliament for WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who has been held in HMP Belmarsh for three and a half years, challenging his proposed extradition to the US to face espionage charges relating to his work publishing classified US government files leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning.
As I arrived, just before the start time of 1pm, it was wonderful to see people lined up all along the front of the House of Parliament, and, as time passed and more people arrived, the line stretched south through Victoria Tower Gardens towards Lambeth Bridge, and across Westminster Bridge to the north, eventually completing the encirclement as people lined up by the Covid memorial wall on the south bank of the River Thames.
Although many organizations were involved — including numerous pro-Assange groups, and Amnesty International, who have an ongoing petition calling for the US government to drop the charges against Julian — this was primarily a protest by concerned individuals, not just from the UK, but also from across Europe, and from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand — who had all chosen to take part because of the huge threat to press freedom that Julian’s proposed extradition represents.
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