Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy’s statement:

In a war-torn valley, a little North of Delhi from where I’m sending you this message, a few weeks ago something interesting happened. The army had surrounded a village in which a group of militants was holed up. The army ordered the villagers to come out of their homes so that they could open fire on the house the militants were in. The villagers came out with their hoes and ploughs and axes and shovels, surrounded the house, brought the militants out, put them in their midst and escorted them out of the village to the edge of the forest and to freedom. I wish we could do this for Julian Assange. He is our militant in the war against imperialism and neo-liberalism. Unfortunately he is imprisoned in a little house right across the road from Harrods, London, where he has been for four years now. There’s no forest near Harrods so we can’t do what those villagers did. Not literally. But we can, in spirit and in metaphor. And we must. Free Julian Assange. Now.