An excellent example of solidarity with Julian Assange was carried out in Wells by supporter Marianne Sorrell who tied yellow ribbons in her town centre in solidarity with Julian Assange and had her letter about it published in the local paper. #YellowRibbons4Assange are a wonderful initiative, let’s keep it up! Here is her letter:

Yellow Ribbons in Wells

People visiting the Cathedral or Market Square in Wells are wondering why they are seeing yellow ribbons around lamp posts. The writing on them is a clue; it reads FREE ASSANGE.

They appeared on the day the hearing of journalist and publisher Julian Assange resumed at the Old Bailey after a six month delay due to COVID. He has been in Belmarsh, the high security, privately owned prison for dangerous terrorist and murderers, since he was illegally
dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London eighteen months ago, where he had taken refuge from the very thing that is happening now – the US government’s attempt to have him extradited to face a 175 year imprisonment in the USA. All because he published, as editor of
WikiLeaks, footage of US war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo.

And the very thing Extinction Rebellion was drawing attention to, the near silence of British corporate mass media on the climate and ecological emergency, is even more in evidence in the case of Julian Assange, which is hitting the headlines all over the world except the UK, the very country in which the kangaroo court hearing him is located!!!

The very same people who shouted loudest about freedom of the press when Extinction Rebellion blocked the delivery of Murdoch’s papers for 12 hours last week, referring to XR activists as “organised criminals”, are complicit in this attempt to stifle and ultimately kill a journalist for disclosing information that the public have a right to know!

If an Australian journalist, publishing in the UK, is incarcerated because he revealed the crimes of the most powerful country in the world, then no journalist is safe from the reach of the US
government. Amnesty International has taken up his case, classifying him as a political prisoner and as such protected by British law from extradition yet he is being psychologically tortured(as
testified by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer) in Belmarsh and his health is seriously impaired. This is a clear warning to all journalists, except US nationals who are protected by Article 1 of the American Constitution, not to publish anything that could offend those who run the US.

If this isn’t the most blatant and pernicious attack on freedom of speech with dire consequences for investigative journalism worldwide, what is? Certainly not blocking a few vans for twelve hours!

Marianne Sorrell, Haybridge, Wells