Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters to Perform ‘Wish You Were’ Outside London’s Home Office in Support of Julian Assange

Rock and Roll legend Roger Waters will be performing Pink Floyd’s classic “Wish You Were Here” outside the UK’s Home Office on Monday in protest of the detention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The free performance will begin at 6 p.m. and will also feature a speech from award-winning journalist John Pilger.

Waters has long supported the publisher and frequently blasts out messages of support during performances.

The legendary musician was also outspoken when Twitter banned Unity4J, a nonpartisan account created to share information and raise awareness about Assange.

“Twitter, you are Big Brother, now we know it for sure, we always suspected it,” Waters said in a video posted to Twitter. “You are an arm of the thought police. You are an arm of the forces of oppression. You wish to suppress freedom of speech, journalism, freedom of anything probably.”

Assange is currently serving a 50 week sentence in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison, which is frequently referred to as the “Gitmo of the UK,” for skipping bail when he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy and was granted asylum. He has been in the hospital ward of the prison since May 16. Photos published by the Gateway Pundit revealed extreme weight loss since this reporter last visited him at the embassy in March.

The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee will face a five day trial beginning on February 25 to determine if he will be extradited to the United States, where he would face charges under the controversial Espionage Act.

If he is convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for the award-winning publications.

The UN has issued a scathing report in which Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said that Assange has been exposed to psychological torture and warned that the award-winning publisher could face the death penalty if he is extradited to the United States. The report came after Melzer visited Assange along with two medical experts who specialize in examining potential torture victims on May 9.

“I am particularly alarmed at the recent announcement by the US Department of Justice of 17 new charges against Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act, which currently carry up to 175 years in prison. This may well result in a life sentence without parole, or possibly even the death penalty, if further charges were to be added in the future,” Melzer explained.

Melzer also wrote that “there has been a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation against Mr. Assange, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Sweden and, more recently, Ecuador.”

“In the course of the past nine years, Mr. Assange has been exposed to persistent, progressively severe abuse ranging from systematic judicial persecution and arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy, and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination.”

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”

 

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