The Friends You Have
A Liberation lullaby, dedicated to Julian Assange & Chelsea Manning
I know you x2
I can tell the childhood from your toes
I know you x2
If it’s you it must be me
Whom they carry x2
Head first to the prison
From the embassy
I know you x2
You’re the heart that beats for liberty
I know you x2
If it’s you it must be me
Whom they carry x2
Head first from the army to solitary
I know you x2
You’re my brother my sister my humanity
I know you x2
If it’s you it must be me
Whom they carry x2
From the light to the shadow
of their impunity
I know you
I stand with you
I will sing til you are free
Choir
We know you
We stand with you
We will sing til you are free
We love you x2
Please stay strong we fight for thee
For Julian, for Chelsea, for the victims of ignominy
We stand in love we sing
We shout we fight we dance
We’re the friends you want you have x2
At the time of posting this song, former military analyst and war crimes whistleblower Chelsea Manning is in jail again in the US, this time for “contempt”, after she refused to testify before a grand jury that is investigating Julian Assange, founder and editor of the journalism website Wikileaks. Chelsea Manning already spent from 2010 to 2017 in jail when her sentence was commuted. She had been convicted of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses after disclosing hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in order to reveal war crimes and human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan. During her detention Chelsea suffered a great deal from cruel treatments, notably being sent multiple times -and again recently- to solitary confinement.
Meanwhile in the UK, Julian Assange is being held at Belmarsh prison where he awaits trial. He faces an extradition request from the US and charges over the publication by Wikileaks of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents revealing war crimes and his alleged role in helping Chelsea Manning avoid detection as a source. Julian Assange was arrested by UK police on April 11th at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, as Ecuador illegally terminated the political asylum it had granted him in 2012…to protect him from political persecution by the US… A UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that Assange’s almost 7 years asylum living inside the embassy with no safe place to go were indeed years of arbitrary detention, and doctors who examined him there stated that he greatly suffered “psychologically, physically, and socially”.
To learn more about Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Wikileaks,
To stay informed and to support them please visit :
Chelsea resists https://xychelsea.is/ and donate to Chelsea’s legal defence funds
And
Defend Wikileaks https://defend.wikileaks.org
The Friends You Have – Music4courage 2019
Sing, Download, Share, Cover, Remix.. Non-commercial <3
