A bronze sculpture of three figures including the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in Parliament Square on Saturday as part of the campaign for his release from prison in London where he is under threat of extradition to the US.
The lifesize sculpture of Assange alongside the whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, all standing atop chairs, was unveiled before a crowd holding “Free Julian Assange” signs.
Beside the figures rests an empty chair, inviting members of the public to stand alongside Assange, Snowden and Manning.
“As an artist, I feel I have a duty to defend freedom of speech and the right to know,” the Italian artist Davide Dormino said of the work, titled Anything To Say?.
“That is why I have created an empty chair, which allows us to stand taller and raise ourselves. It changes our perspective and prompts us to look beyond what we are shown and what is hidden.”
The sculpture has been displayed in Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium, Serbia and Australia.
Assange is “dangerously close” to being extradited to the US after losing his latest legal appeal, his family warned earlier this month, amid growing fears he could spend the rest of his life in prison for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.
The WikiLeaks founder was initially charged in 2019 with conspiring to hack into a military computer – an accusation arising out of the massive leak by Manning to WikiLeaks nine years earlier. The prosecutors’ case against him was dramatically expanded later that year to include 17 counts of violating the US Espionage Act.
Assange has been held for the past four years in Belmarsh prison in London as extradition proceedings work their way through British courts. The Biden administration has faced calls to drop the charges, including from leading news outlets, over concerns that the prosecution is an attack on media freedom.
“The fourth chair is empty because it is our chair. The one for us to stand up on to express ourselves or simply to stand next to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, who had the courage to say no to the intrusion of global surveillance and to lies that lead to war,” said the UK campaign behind Saturday’s protest, Don’t Extradite Assange.
Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of military records and diplomatic cables via the open information site WikiLeaks in 2010 – one of the largest disclosures of military secrets in US history. Manning was a former intelligence analyst posted outside Baghdad during the Iraq war.
Three years later, she was convicted under the Espionage Act. She was given a 35-year sentence, of which she served seven years.
In 2013 Snowden, working at the time as a National Security Agency contractor, disclosed inside intelligence about the US government’s surveillance of the digital communications of millions of Americans through the Guardian and Washington Post. He later fled and was granted asylum in Russia.
