LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2019) Julian Assange's supporters, who held a rally outside of London's high-security Belmarsh prison, where the WikiLeaks founder is currently being held, told Sputnik that his arrest was "the shame for the world" and accused the UK government of violating his human rights.
Campaigners for the now imprisoned Assange staged a lively picket on Saturday outside of Belmarsh Prison, demanding that Assange be freed without delay.
"The British government has also violated [Assange's] human rights, we've been in shock since this happened and can only imagine what Julian has been through," one Ecuadorian activist, going by the name of Clara and affiliated to the pro-Assange group "Wise Up Action," said.
Speaking to Sputnik at the scene, she stressed that the Ecuadorian government had acted unconstitutionally by suspending Assange's Ecuadorean citizenship, which he was granted at the end of 2017.
"The way they grabbed this man, nearly seven years in the embassy without sunlight or fresh air, it was absolutely outrageous, it's a shame for the world ... Julian had Ecuadorian citizenship but they took all that away from him, just like that, and broke the constitution in doing that," the activist said.
She went on to claim that Assange had been the target of a persistent "witch hunt" following his organization's role in the leaking of a sizable quantity of classified US information in 2010, something which supporters fear may ultimately involve him being extradited to the United States for prosecution.
"It's been a witch hunt from the beginning, and god knows where he's going to go, but we'll make as much noise as we can. We've got a lot of support around the world, so we'll see what's going to happen," the activist added.
Assange was arrested in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on Thursday and was later charged with jumping bail in Westminster Magistrate's Court.
The WikiLeaks founder is believed to have thought his extradition would ultimately involve his forced relocation to the United States, something supporters claim is a still valid concern given that another extradition request was recently submitted by Washington over his alleged role in the theft and dissemination of classified materials, some of which pertained to US military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
