President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) was inspired at the press conference this Thursday (22), in Rome, after visiting the main leaders of Italy and the Vatican. He criticized countries that spend fortunes to make war, right-wing utopias, gender violence and the European conditions for signing the free trade agreement with Mercosur. Even against the president of the Central Bank of Brazil, Campos Neto, Lula fired his indignation.
After the interview came to an end, under the allegation that the entourage was almost late to leave for Paris, Lula remained standing at the pulpit. He stared at the journalists and said he wanted to say one more thing.
“I have been a little indignant with the defenders of freedom of the press in the world”, stated the president. “We have (Julian) Assange arrested in England because he denounced American espionage to the world. Now he's going to be sent back to the United States maybe to spend his life in prison and I don't see any press demonstrations to defend the freedom of the press. The name of this is cowardice, because what Assange did deserves respect from any journalist on the face of the Earth. He had the courage to denounce that the US was spying. He denounced what every journalist would want to denounce if he had received the news as he did”.
“O que Assange fez merece respeito”
— Brasil de Fato (@brasildefato) June 22, 2023
Lula se manifestou sobre a extradição do jornalista Julian Assange.
Segundo ele, "o que Assange fez merece respeito de qualquer jornalista da face da terra. Ele teve a coragem de divulgar que os EUA faziam espionagem".#BrasildeFato pic.twitter.com/c00de32y0F
“What Assange did deserves respect” Lula spoke about the extradition of journalist Julian Assange. According to him, "what Assange did deserves respect from any journalist on the face of the earth. He had the courage to denounce that the US was spying". #BrasildeFato
In 2010, journalist Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, published approximately 250,000 files, including photos, videos and Pentagon documents, which revealed war crimes committed by the US military and torture acts against detainees in Guantánamo prison, a US military base in Cuba. For four years, he has been imprisoned in London, awaiting possible extradition to the United States, where he could be sentenced to a 175 years sentence.
Stela Assange (in the center of the image), Julian's wife, during a protest in London defending the journalist / Susannah Ireland / AFP - 2/11/2023
China vs USA
Lula also commented on the increase in hostilities between China and the United States, the two largest economies in the world. “We don't want any more Cold War, and we don't want any more war either. That's why I spoke with the president (Sergio Mattarella), with the prime minister (Georgia Meloni), with Pope Francis. And I agree with the pope: it is necessary to have people involved in discussing the peace issue. To put the actors (Russia and Ukraine) at a negotiating table, to stop shooting and find a peaceful solution, because the world has 800 million people who go to sleep without having anything to eat and it's not fair to spend billions of dollars or euros on an unnecessary war”.
Edited by: Thales Schmidt
