"Monday 3 May is International Press Freedom Day as well as Labour Day in Brisbane. John Shipton, Julian Assange’s father, will march with Julian’s union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (the MEAA) on Brisbane’s Labour Day to remind Australia that his son, a famous Queensland-born journalist, whistle-blower and MEAA member is locked up in the UK on International Press Freedom Day and his plight is being ignored by the Australian government.
“Julian is now 10 years in arbitrary detention: Wandsworth prison, ten days solitary confinement; Norwich, eighteen months house arrest; Ecuador’s London embassy, 7.5 years; and now, Belmarsh maximum-security prison, 2 years in a cell 23 hours per day. Ten years just for telling the truth!”, said Mr Shipton.
Julian Assange has been detained arbitrarily (in the judgement of the UN) for ten years for disclosing war crimes by the US and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan and is locked up in Belmarsh Prison, facing extradition to the USA where he may be imprisoned for another 175 years.
“Julian’s mistreatment is intended as an example to journalists everywhere of the fate that befalls journalists who expose US war crimes,’ said John Shipton. “I hope to remind the journalists I march with that they are Julian too.”
That afternoon John Shipton will speak at an International Press Freedom Day rally in Bunyapa Park in West End, supported by Senator Larissa Waters, Australian Parliamentary Group to Bring Julian Home, Michael Cope, President, Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, Paul Toner, Amnesty International, Kasun Ubayasiri, Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and Nigel Powell, Qld police corruption whistleblower.
“We, the people of Queensland, foremost and strongest, must join with all other Australians, along with the people of Europe, the Middle East, South America, UK and USA, declaring, iron-hard, that this, the extradition of Julian Assange, slow-grinding murder before our eyes, shall not pass, will never pass,” said John Shipton.
John Shipton is embarking on an epic tour down the east coast, travelling from Melbourne to Brisbane, talking in Nimbin, Brisbane, Mullumbimby, Lismore, Byron, Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Port Macquarie, Newcastle, Sydney and Canberra, to speak about his son and to reconnect with Assange supporters, before he embarks on an even more epic journey to the UK and the US where he will plead with President Joe Biden to ease his family and Julian’s decade-long suffering and drop the charges and free Assange.
Story supplied by John Jiggens
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DETAILS
Date:
May 3
Time:
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm"
Source: