As Julian Assange marks 1,000 days in Ecuador's London Embassy, teleSUR spoke with him and Ecuadors Foreign Minister on the importance of this landmarkcase.<\/p>\n
On Monday Julian Assange marks his 1,000th day in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. 24,000 hours spent trapped in a handful of little rooms in a non-descript Knightsbridge road: tirelessly working, rarely venturing into the sunlight. <\/p>\n
While the building appears unremarkable, the symbolism of the four walls is great. Because ironically, the inside represents the freedom offered by the Latin American country, and outside, persecution and indefinite imprisonment await. Yet the Australian national has never been charged with a crime. <\/p>\n
This is the tale of one of the greatest battles over freedom of speech in modern history, and how the tiny nation of Ecuador became an internationally recognized champion of human rights against the opposition of two imperialist giants. <\/p>\n
In interviews with teleSUR, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Ecuadors Foreign minister have outlined the significance of this battle to defend those who publish the truth, whatever the consequences for the powerful. <\/p>\n
Patino believes that these events underline how they show a commitment to safeguarding human rights, freedom and life, in todays Latin America that is in stark contrast to a past riddled with dictators and human rights abused <\/p>\n
It has been a difficult 1000 days. Not so much for me but for my family, Assange told teleSUR in an interview in the run up to the Monday's anniversary. <\/p>\n
For me, I have plenty of things to concentrate on that are not in the embassy. I have an organization to run. <\/p>\n
That organization, Assanges website Wikileaks, exploded into the limelight in April 2010 when it released an electrifying U.S. military video. It depicted U.S. military personnel in an Apache helicopter killing 18 civilians in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters staff. The clip, entitled Collateral Murder, would be the first piece of evidence pointing to U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in the public domain. <\/p>\n
Two months later, Chelsea Manning, a then-22-year-old intelligence private with the U.S. military in Iraq, was arrested, charged with disclosing national secrets. It would later become apparent that Manning had executed the biggest leak in history: millions upon millions of top secret computer files, cascades of damaging documents. <\/p>\n
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