About 150 supporters of Julian Assange demonstrated outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London yesterday.

Assange supporters outside Ecuadoran embassy. Liliana in centre.

Liliana, originally from Ecuador but living in London for most of her life, said she had come along because she believes in freedom of speech and “to show our support for Julian Assange to [Ecuador president] Rafael Correa, who says he believes in freedom of speech too.”

“I don’t believe that governments should hide important facts from the people, and Julian has shown us things that really needed to be known.”

Julie explained that she had been following the cases of Assange and Bradley Manning since they started: “I have come to see for myself because I hate the way western governments and the media keep us in the dark and feed us so much propaganda. You can see the same with what is happening in Syria.

“You can also see the how control by the military is spreading here and in the United States. It is all part of the expansion of an American empire.”

C.S. from Cyprus said that what was happening with Assange shows what international law and order is really like: “It is a sham. There is no equality or rule of law, only the rule of money and the gun. The capitalists behind the US and British governments are responsible for this. They are doing it for their own interests. That is why they are after Assange for exposing their imperialist politics.”

Protesters hemmed in

The police storming the Ecuadorean embassy would normally be considered an act of war, he said: “You can imagine the response if a Latin American country like Ecuador invaded a US embassy. The US government would go crazy.”

“With the economic crisis, they are trying to destroy peoples’ rights and liberties.”

S.G. said he was attending the demonstration to express his solidarity with Julian Assange: “The whole world should be grateful to Assange. That’s why I am here today. He rightly deserves asylum. Not because he is a criminal, but because he is facing trumped up charges. If he is extradited to Sweden he could end up in the US, where he’ll be executed for treason.

“By leaking the embassy files, Assange has changed the dimensions of international politics... The British government says they will no longer treat the building where Assange is staying as a diplomatic embassy and that they will storm it and drag him out. They are treating the Ecuadorean government like they did Libya, trying to turn it into a pariah state. They are essentially declaring war.”

Britain had “become almost like a police state with what I call ultra-surveillance. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 are coming true.

“It is the same across Europe. We’re seeing Greece collapse and Spain collapsing. Everything is unravelling. Something has to change. But the problem is there is no organised opposition to the capitalists. There was the Occupy movement, but it was not solid enough. We need something more political, we need a new political party.”